Author Topic: China vs. the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration  (Read 24885 times)

Crafty_Dog

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DougMacG

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« Last Edit: December 08, 2021, 02:43:11 PM by Crafty_Dog »

DougMacG

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Re: China to build naval base on west coast of Africa?
« Reply #204 on: December 08, 2021, 06:56:17 PM »
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/china-poised-establish-1st-ever-naval-base-atlantic-alarming-us-officials?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=322

From the zerohedge piece on Ukraine:
For 200 years, the United States has declared a Monroe Doctrine that puts our hemisphere off-limits to new colonizations.

Looks like that needs to include the west coast of Africa as well.  The Biden Doctrine?

Crafty_Dog

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Stratfor: China vs. New Zealand
« Reply #205 on: December 10, 2021, 10:11:41 AM »


New Threats Test New Zealand’s Approach to Chinese Encroachment
4 MIN READDec 9, 2021 | 16:09 GMT





New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (right) holds a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing, China, on April 1, 2019.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (right) holds a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing, China, on April 1, 2019.

(KYODO NEWS/Naohiko Hatta/Pool)

New Zealand’s balance between securing its periphery and maintaining trade ties with China could shift toward the former over the next year as domestic defense pressure and Beijing’s military activities in the Pacific both accelerate. The New Zealand Defense Force published its Defence Assessment 2021 on Dec. 8, the first such report since 2016, in which the military called for shifting away from a “reactive risk management” approach to a proactive strategy that helps “pre-empt and prevent security threats.” This is notable because the country has long attempted to deftly balance its deep economic ties with China against its regional security concerns, which has often caused New Zealand to distance itself from the United States and Australia’s more proactive efforts to address China’s military advancement.

The report cited China’s rise as a strategic competitor in the region, including its militarization of the South China Sea, and rapidly modernizing military as justification for a New Zealand defense shift.
The potential for a dual-use facility in the Pacific was one of the top “concerning developments to watch” identified in the report. This was likely a veiled reference to China, which has been expanding its commercial and security relations in the Pacific Islands in recent years.
Internal political dynamics will likely still push New Zealand to keep its distance from major U.S. security agreements. New Zealand’s position on defense matters, especially during the tenure of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, is likely to remain split. Ardern will probably continue pushing for a reserved approach to strategic alignment with an emphasis on human rights issues, as the country’s military leaders push for a realization of the security threats from China’s maritime activities. Wellington is thus likely to remain hesitant to join U.S.-led security arrangements in the region, like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) and the recently signed AUKUS trilateral security pact.

Under Ardern, New Zealand has pushed a human rights-focused foreign policy, with the parliament in May passing a motion to condemn China’s human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. New Zealand also announced in October it wouldn’t send high-level officials to the Beijing Winter Olympics in February, but cited COVID-19 as the main concern.
Wellington has been hesitant to wield Western security groups, like the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing pact, as a platform for broader strategic competition with China. In April, the country’s foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta stated New Zealand did not want to use Five Eyes to address issues over Xinjiang, which came three months after New Zealand opted out of a Five Eyes statement condemning China’s mass arrests in Hong Kong.
Wellington may be forced to reconsider its conservative approach if Beijing accelerates military activities in the Pacific Islands. But New Zealand’s small military budget and heavy dependence on Chinese trade would limit the extent of this rethink. In recent years, China has been steadily increasing its influence in the Pacific Islands, a critical region for sea lines of communication. In February, for example, China’s WYW Holding Limited announced a plan to build New Daru City, including an industrial zone and a seaport, on a “build, operate, transfer” basis for Papua New Guinea. Should China step up its military engagement in the region via dual-use ports or more extensive surveillance installations, Wellington’s strategic shift toward counteracting Chinese regional dominance may also speed up. Still, New Zealand’s small military budget (approximately $3.7 billion for fiscal year 2021-2022), combined with its reliance on China as its top export destination, would make a strategic rethink limited in scope — likely focusing on deepening joint exercises and training with partners like the United States and Australia, as well as pursuing security cooperation (e.g. joint maritime access agreements) with Pacific Island nations.

New Zealand’s ability to outcompete China’s trade ties with the Pacific Islands is limited, given the small size of its market (5 million people with a GDP of $209 billion in 2019) compared with China’s (1.41 billion people with a GDP of $14.3 trillion in 2019).

Crafty_Dog

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UAE shuts down China faciity under US pressure
« Reply #206 on: December 11, 2021, 05:54:20 AM »
U.A.E. Shut Down China Facility Under U.S. Pressure, Emirates Says
Construction rattled relations between Washington and Gulf ally over concerns that Beijing was building military facility

Abu Dhabi's Khalifa Port.
PHOTO: SATISH KUMAR/REUTERS
By Warren P. Strobel
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Dec. 9, 2021 12:28 pm ET
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WASHINGTON—The United Arab Emirates recently ordered work halted on a Chinese facility in the country after American officials argued that Beijing intended to use the site for military purposes, a top U.A.E. official said Thursday.

Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the U.A.E.’s leadership, said the Emirates ordered work stopped at the site at Washington’s behest. The U.A.E., he said, didn’t believe the facility was intended for military or security uses.

“We stopped the work on the facilities,” Mr. Gargash said. “But our position remains the same, that the facilities were not military facilities.” He didn’t elaborate on what the U.A.E. believed the facilities were to be used for.

“You hear the concerns of your ally and it would be foolish” not to take them into account, he said of the Biden administration.

Mr. Gargash’s remarks to the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, a think tank, appear to be the first public remarks by a U.A.E. official on the matter.


Anwar Gargash, a diplomatic adviser to the United Arab Emirates’s leadership, said the country ordered work stopped on a Chinese facility at Washington’s behest.
PHOTO: IAKOVOS HATZISTAVROU/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
The Biden administration’s push to persuade the Emirates to stop the base from being built reflects the challenges it faces in attempting to compete with Beijing globally.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that U.S. intelligence agencies had discovered this spring the Chinese construction at a port near the U.A.E. capital of Abu Dhabi, where China’s giant Cosco shipping conglomerate operates a commercial container terminal.

The discovery rattled relations between the Biden administration and the U.A.E., one of Washington’s top allies in the Gulf, and led to a series of high-level meetings and intelligence-sharing between the two countries. At U.S. urging, construction at the site was recently halted, the Journal reported.

U.S. and U.A.E. officials haven’t disclosed the precise nature of the facility under construction.



Crafty_Dog

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Chinese penetration in the Balkans
« Reply #209 on: December 17, 2021, 09:44:29 AM »
China in the Balkans. China National Technical Import & Export Corp. and Powerchina Resources are planning to invest 130 million euros ($147 million) to build a wind park in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the capacity to produce 236.6 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year. On Thursday, the European Parliament passed a resolution denouncing China’s growing influence in the Western Balkans.


DougMacG

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Re: UAE shuts down China faciity under US pressure
« Reply #211 on: December 20, 2021, 06:52:44 AM »
Regarding Dec 11 Crafty post'

I would like to give credit where credit is due.  This appears to be a Biden Accomplishment, two words I have not previously used together.
« Last Edit: December 20, 2021, 08:09:38 AM by DougMacG »

DougMacG

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Re: China vs. the World; Olympics?
« Reply #212 on: December 20, 2021, 09:19:49 AM »
The Guardian:  Remember the Uyghers

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/14/the-guardian-view-on-chinas-winter-olympics-remember-the-uyghurs

Remember them??  How about DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, especially if you're complicit.

What about Tibet?
https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2020/09/china-tibet-and-the-uighurs-a-pattern-of-genocide/
https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/tibetans-uyghurs-protest-in-paris-over-china-s-rights-violations-121121100160_1.html

What about freedom promised in Hong Kong? 
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hong-kong-freedoms-democracy-protests-china-crackdown

How about Taiwanese, living everyday in fear:
https://www.independentsentinel.com/xi-threatens-biden-over-taiwan-help-the-us-will-get-burnt/

What about the Chinese people themselves, living under oppression every day:
https://www.visiontimes.com/2021/01/19/the-tory-report-chinas-horrific-human-rights-violations-over-the-past-five-years.html

How about the origin of Covid and non-compliance with all inquiries?
https://www.city-journal.org/new-evidence-for-lab-leak-hypothesis-of-covid-origins

How about the doctors and scientists that wanted to sound the alarm on a new corona virus?
https://www.foxnews.com/world/chinese-doctor-critics-who-first-raised-the-alarm-over-covid-19-vanishes

What about technology theft?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/06/china-technology-theft-fbi-biggest-threat
----------------------------------------------------------
What does it take to offend the people of the world?

Biden response:  He's not sending Jill and her entourage to the games.  'Cause that's what is most important to Xi??
« Last Edit: December 20, 2021, 09:26:11 AM by DougMacG »

Crafty_Dog

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Crafty_Dog

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WT: Chinese penetration of Sri Lanka
« Reply #219 on: January 10, 2022, 02:19:03 AM »
Sri Lanka seeks Chinese debt reform amid crisis

Beijing has island in economic grasp

BY KRISHAN FRANCIS ASSOCIATED PRESS COLOMBO, SRI LANKA | The president of debt-ridden Sri Lanka on Sunday asked China for the restructuring of its loans and access to preferential credit for imports of essential goods, as the island nation struggles in the throes of its worst economic crisis, partly because of Beijingfi nanced projects that don’t generate revenue.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa told visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that it would be “a great relief to the country if attention could be paid on restructuring the debt repayments as a solution to the economic crisis that has arisen in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic,” according to a statement from his office.

Mr. Rajapaksa asked Mr. Wang for a concessionary credit facility for imports so that industries can run without disruption, the statement said. He also requested assistance to enable Chinese tourists to travel to Sri Lanka within a secure bubble.

Mr. Wang and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president’s brother, later visited Colombo’s Port City, a reclaimed island developed with Chinese investment, where they opened a promenade and inaugurated the sailing of 65 boats to commemorate the 65 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

In his speech at the Port City, Mr. Wang said a persistent and unchecked pandemic has made economic recovery difficult and the two countries must take the anniversary of the diplomatic ties to work closer together.

He did not elaborate nor announce any relief measures.

Mr. Wang arrived in Sri Lanka on Saturday from the Maldives on the last leg of a multinational trip that also took him to Eritrea, Kenya and the Comoros in East Africa.

Sri Lanka faces one of its worst economic crises, with foreign reserves down to around $1.6 billion, barely enough for a few weeks of imports. It also has foreign debt obligations exceeding $7 billion in 2022, including repayment of bonds worth $500 million in January and $1 billion in July.

The declining foreign reserves are partly blamed on infrastructure projects built with Chinese loans that don’t make money. China loaned money to build a seaport and airport in the southern Hambantota district, in addition to a wide network of roads.

Central Bank figures show that Chinese loans to Sri Lanka total around $3.38 billion, not including loans to state-owned businesses, which are accounted for separately and thought to be substantial.

“Technically we can claim we are bankrupt now,” said Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, principal researcher at the Point Pedro Institute of Development. “When you have your net external foreign assets have been in the red, that means you are technically bankrupt.”

The situation has left households grappling with severe shortages. People wait in long lines to buy essential goods such as milk powder, cooking gas and kerosene. Prices have increased sharply, and the Central Bank says the inflation rate rose to 12.1% by the end of December from 9.9% in November. Food inflation increased to over 22% in the same period.

Mr. Wang’s visit has again highlighted the regional power struggle between China and India, Sri Lanka’s closest neighbor, which considers the island part of its domain.

China considers Sri Lanka to be a critical link in its Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative.


Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (left) met Sunday in Sri Lanka with Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, who asked for a restructuring of its loans for projects under Beijing’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative. ASSOCIATED PRESS

Crafty_Dog

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China vs. Australia & Japan
« Reply #220 on: January 12, 2022, 06:04:32 AM »
WSJ

The last few months have been a whirlwind for Australia’s defense diplomacy as the South Pacific nation of 26 million braces itself against Chinese advances in the region. The latest example is Canberra’s new Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) with Tokyo, which makes it easier for Australia’s military to conduct operations out of Japan, and vice versa.

The new pact sets the legal terms for visiting forces in each country, and is notable because Tokyo has been reluctant to coordinate closely on military matters with any nation except the U.S. The RAA will give Aussie forces more access to Japanese territory, facilitating joint operations in the Northern Pacific, including contested waters in the East and South China Seas. Japanese forces can exercise with Australia in the Indian Ocean and South Pacific.

China’s behavior under President Xi Jinping has cratered its previously stable relationship with Australia. A rift over Canberra’s decision not to use Huawei technology because of espionage and security risks accelerated amid the Covid-19 pandemic, when Beijing’s diplomats bludgeoned Prime Minister Scott Morrison for calling for an inquiry into the coronavirus’s origins. China began a campaign of economic sanctions against the country’s exports, demanded Australia’s press and representatives cease criticism of Chinese policies, detained one Australian citizen and put a second on trial.


Australia has also had a front-row seat to China’s naval buildup, which could be used to threaten Australia’s trade further if it doesn’t bend the knee politically. Australian defense planners are watching China’s strategic inroads in Pacific island nations closer to Australia’s borders like the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Vanuatu.


The Morrison government has responded with creativity. It rejoined naval exercises with the so-called Quad of India, Japan and the U.S. in 2020. Then came the Aukus submarine technology sharing agreement with the U.S. and U.K. last September. That was followed by a major contract with South Korea to fortify Australian artillery, signed in December.

The U.S. remains the main Pacific military counterweight to China, whose military budget far exceeds Japan and Australia’s combined. Yet in a conflict over Taiwan, Australia and Japan would be the two nations most likely to aid Taipei besides the U.S. This defense agreement strengthens that deterrence and contributes to a more stable Pacific.


DougMacG

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Re: China vs. the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration
« Reply #221 on: January 13, 2022, 06:23:38 AM »
A FRIEND WHO LIVED IN CHINA FOR SOME TIME SAYS THE WORD TO LISTEN FOR IS “HARMONY”:  FAUCI & “TOP SCIENTISTS” LIED TO US ABOUT POSSIBLE COVID LEAK THEORIES – VIVA FREI VLAWG. [VIDEO]

His comments on this, filtered through my memory:
One of the nation’s top scientists agreed with lying to the public in order to preserve “international harmony”. Exact words. “Harmony” is just about the most Chinese trump card against objective reality you can find. You might be telling the truth, but if you are “disharmonious”, off to the laogai with you. I hadn’t known that exat term was used when this was first reported. Knowing it now, it’s the clearest confession of loyalty to PR China that I have ever seen from a government official, to include Clinton taking cash from Chinese fixers and Swalwell banging a hot Chinese spy.

So, there you have it.   To quote Kipling: “They sold us, and delivered us bound to our foe.”

 12:49 am by Sarah Hoyt
Pj media instapundit

Crafty_Dog

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Chinese penetration of UK
« Reply #222 on: January 24, 2022, 04:33:36 AM »

G M

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Crafty_Dog

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WSJ: EU bends knee as China goes after Lithuania
« Reply #224 on: January 29, 2022, 12:02:20 PM »
Europe Brings a Lawsuit to a China Fight
Beijing punishes tiny Lithuania, and the EU sends in the lawyers.
By The Editorial Board
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Updated Jan. 29, 2022 12:29 pm ET


Sometimes we wonder what world European leaders think they’re living in. The European Union on Thursday responded to China’s trade assault against its member state Lithuania by filing a . . . complaint at the World Trade Organization. Talk about bringing a quill pen to a gun fight.


The EU said it will challenge China’s “discriminatory trade practices” against Lithuania. “Launching a WTO case is not a step we take lightly. However, after repeated failed attempts to resolve the issue bilaterally, we see no other way forward,” EU trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said. “The EU is determined to act as one and act fast against measures in breach of WTO rules, which threaten the integrity of our Single Market.” How “determined” does that really sound?

Though China denies it, Beijing has effectively imposed a trade embargo on Lithuania after Vilnius upgraded ties with Taiwan. China’s restrictions on imports, exports and services have also hit other European goods that use Lithuanian components. Reuters reported in December that the Chinese government had pressured a German car-parts maker to stop using Lithuanian-produced parts in its supply chain.

The Chinese foreign ministry responded Thursday that the EU’s complaint is “groundless and inconsistent” and warned Brussels to be “wary” of Lithuania, as if the tiny Baltic nation is the trade menace. Beijing claims its beef with Vilnius is political and not economic, but the Chinese Communist Party uses trade as a political weapon. It is also punishing Australia for daring to call for an independent probe into the origins of Covid-19.


Going to the WTO has symbolic value, but it isn’t known for speedily resolving disputes. The EU and China can begin “consultations” that could drag on for months. If those fail, the case would go to a WTO panel subject to appeal. The whole process could take years, and meanwhile Lithuania suffers.

The only language China understands here is comparable economic force. If Beijing won’t stop punishing Lithuania, EU trade retaliation will send a stronger message than a legal filing at the WTO. Killing the EU-China investment deal, agreed to in principle more than a year ago but still not ratified, would get Beijing’s attention.

If the EU can’t stand up for its single market to defend its weakest members, then what good is it?



Crafty_Dog

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D1: What lessons is China taking from the Uke War?
« Reply #227 on: April 03, 2022, 05:28:50 AM »
What Lessons is China Taking from the Ukraine War?
From battlefield concepts to geopolitics, Beijing is sure to be watching with avid interest—and some chagrin.
By THOMAS CORBETT, MA XIU and PETER W. SINGER
APRIL 3, 2022 08:00 AM ET
COMMENTARY
THE CHINA INTELLIGENCE

Operation Desert Storm was a turning point in modern Chinese military history. As military planners with the People’s Liberation Army watched U.S. and allied forces make short work of the world’s fourth-largest military (on paper), equipped with many of the same systems as the PLA, it became obvious that China’s quantitatively superior but qualitatively lacking massed infantry would stand no chance against the combination of modern weaponry, C4ISR, and joint operations seen in Iraq. The result was new military concepts and over two decades of often-difficult reforms, which produced the modern, far more capable, “informationized” PLA of today.

Today, the PLA is no doubt closely observing its Russian contemporaries in Ukraine as they under-perform in multiple areas, from failing to take key targets or claim air supremacy to running low on fuel and supplies and possibly experiencing morale collapse, and surely taking away lessons that will shape its own future. Of note, Russia’s experience appears to have confirmed many of China’s recent assumptions behind its investments, such as the utility of unmanned aerial systems in high-intensity conflict, as well as the necessity for the PLA’s 2015 reforms, which aim to fix many of the issues driving Russian failure that the PLA recognizes in itself.

Of the many issues that have contributed to Russia’s physical battlefield woes in Ukraine, one of the most important has been the lack of effective joint or combined arms operations, widely considered essential to any effective modern fighting force. Russia’s poor level of coordination between its various services and branches can only be generously described as incompetent. For example, it has repeatedly failed to provide effective air support to its ground forces or deconflict its air and air-defense forces to avoid friendly fire.

The PLA has long had its own serious issues with joint operations. Traditionally dominated by the Army, the PLA had little success developing a truly joint force until a series of sweeping reforms in 2015 that replaced the former Army-dominated system with a series of joint theater commands. The PLA is thus aware of its own shortcomings and taking steps to fix it, but likely remains far off from being able to conduct truly effective, seamless joint operations. Efforts to conduct joint exercises are becoming more common, but most senior PLA leaders are still relatively inexperienced with joint operations, and even new officers typically do not receive joint education below the corps level. Further, it remains to be seen how far these reforms will go or to what extent they will “stick;” indeed, one reason the PLA did not attempt these reforms until 2015 was because of strong institutional pushback from the Army, whose leaders wished to retain their dominant status.


To China, the Ukraine invasion will reinforce the importance of joint and combined arms operations, while also making clear that such operations are highly difficult to conduct in practice. Russia’s stumbles may give the PLA pause as to whether it is truly ready for all the joint elements that a successful Taiwan seizure would require, including close coordination between sea, air, and land forces.

Another issue which has contributed to Russia’s military woes is the low quality of its conscript force. Indeed, Ukraine has even turned images of Russian POW conscripts being allowed to call their mothers into a weapon in its information warfare. While some militaries, such as Israel, have managed to maintain a high-quality conscript force, a full-time professional force is generally considered to hold numerous substantial advantages, which is why most of the Western world now uses a voluntary recruitment model. Despite the copious hyper-masculine recruiting videos which so excited certain Western politicians, Russia has struggled to attract enough voluntary recruits to move away from its current system of 12-month conscription.

Despite some recent success in recruiting a higher-quality, more-educated voluntary force, the PLA has likewise failed to move away from conscription. It presently requires about 660,000 two-year conscripts, many lacking even partial high-school education, to fill out its ranks. While this does not bode well for the PLA’s ability to conduct complex operations, one area where the PLA may have an advantage over its Russian counterparts is in the area of motivation. The Russian conscripts are not just poorly trained, but also suffer from low morale. Many among the invasion force did not know why they were going to Ukraine, or even that they were going to Ukraine at all. By contrast, the PLA places heavy emphasis on personnel political education, and Chinese conscripts have been raised from an early age to believe in the necessity of “liberating” Taiwan. Still, the PLA is surely watching with concern as a conscript force with at least some similarities to its own fares so poorly, and will likely redouble their campaign to attract more, and preferably higher-quality, voluntary recruits.

Russia also allowed its adversary to dominate the information environment. Due to a combination of overly optimistic assumptions about the political weakness of its foe and logistical reliance on its target’s own communications networks, Russia never launched the long-feared effort to take down Ukrainian communications networks. Putin’s strategists wrongly believed that its own messaging and rapid military advances would go viral across these networks and aid in collapsing the Ukrainian state. As well, many of Russia’s units turned out to need access to Ukrainian civilian networks for their own operations.

Instead, the Zelenskyy regime turned the tables on Russia, winning the information war inside both Ukraine and the West, and in so doing, transforming the greater war. Deft Ukrainian government messaging and a mobilized civilian populace created a new sense of domestic unity, as well as mobilizing essential military aid and historic economic sanctions from a widened network of global allies. In turn, Russian use of civilian networks made it susceptible to intercepts and geolocated targeting of its units. The PLA has streamlined coordination between its cyber, electronic warfare, space, and information warfare efforts through the recent creation of the Strategic Support Force, indicating it recognizes the importance of information dominance. It can be expected to redouble its efforts at cyber/information warfare, as well as encrypted communications, to ensure its own operations don’t suffer the same flaws.

Another ongoing issue has been Russia’s serious problems with poor logistics. The sight of broken-down or abandoned vehicles has become common as Russian forces run out of fuel and other vital supplies. To its credit, the PLA has also been rapidly reforming and modernizing its logistical system as part of the same broad set of 2015 reforms. As part of these reforms, the PLA has emphasized its logistics organizations and created the Joint Logistics Support Force. This force’s training has focused on cooperation with other branches of the PLA, and it has cut its teeth training to establish supply lines during natural disasters. In 2018, the JLSF launched its first major exercise, dubbed “Joint Logistics Support Mission 2018,” featuring medical drones, helicopter-dropped refueling depots, and operations in harsh and remote terrain.

However, while the outward manifestation of many of the issues faced by the Russian military appear to be logistical in nature, the true heart of the issue may be corruption. There are reports that before the invasion Russian military officers sold off their fuel and food supplies, and that these corrupt practices may be responsible for the stalling of a Russian tank column outside Kyiv. In this regard, the PLA has much to fear. Corruption has plagued the PLA for decades, with some PLA officers bluntly stating in 2015 that it could undermine China’s ability to wage war. Reportedly, more than 13,000 PLA officers have been punished in some capacity for corruption since Xi Jinping took power, including more than a hundred generals. This was a particular problem in the logistics sector, where there are more opportunities for corruption and links to the civilian economy.

Yet, despite the reorganization of the PLA and widespread prosecution of corruption cases, it still appears to be a major issue. Anti-corruption efforts are ongoing, with Chinese Gen. Zhang Youxia recently calling for innovative measures to keep up the fight. But the fact that Fu Zhenghua, the man brought in to take down the corrupt former security chief Zhou Yongkang, is himself now under investigation for corruption does not bode well for the long-term effectiveness of China’s efforts. The troubled invasion of Ukraine provides a stark real-world example to Xi, the CCP, and PLA about the impact corruption can have on military effectiveness, and will no doubt cause them to redouble their anti-corruption efforts with a newfound urgency. However given its similar authoritarian system and emphasis on career advancement through patronage, systemic corruption may be baked into the system.

Finally, there is the strategic issue of Beijing’s reaction to the global sanctions that have hit the Russian ruble and economy. The swift and severe economic retaliation of the U.S., EU, and others took Moscow by surprise. Even more unexpected was the rapid withdrawal of almost 500 global corporations, pushed on by an effective effort at naming and shaming them into acting to protect their own brands. A longer-term effort targeting essential elements of Russia’s defense industry will hamstring it for years.

While China will benefit from Russia’s increasing reliance on its goods and services, Beijing can be expected to retool its geo-economic strategy to reduce its vulnerability to a similar nightmare scenario. For example, it will likely redouble its efforts to promote its Cross-Border Interbank Payment System—an alternative to the SWIFT international banking system—among its strategic partners and foreign aid recipients in the developing world. 

Likewise, China’s recent “Dual Circulation” economic strategy appears to be aimed at countering a decoupling from China’s trade partners. Further, Beijing has surely observed how easy it was for corporations to withdraw from Moscow. If China is to be exposed to the risk of global sanctions and corporate withdrawal, so too are countries and corporations exposed to dependence on the world’s second-largest economy, and thus the government will likely take efforts to make any sanctions or corporate turn against China as painful a prospect as possible. Either way, policymakers in Washington need to understand that the sanctions being used today against Russia are unlikely be as effective the next time around, as China is not just a different economy, but also will learn from the current conflict and adjust accordingly.

For all these valuable lessons, there is little doubt that China has been watching the ongoing conflict with no small amount of chagrin. Chinese leaders are reportedly surprised and unsettled by the poor military performance of its Russian partners, Ukraine’s resistance, and the level of solidarity from the international community. The image of a much smaller state, against all odds, successfully resisting a larger neighbor surely sits uneasily in the psyches of CCP apparatchiks and PLA officials. It also counters the narrative of overwhelming force and grim inevitability Beijing has sought to instill in the psyches of the Taiwanese people. It is notable that early attempts by Chinese state media to capitalize on the Ukraine invasion in precisely this fashion, illustrating how the United States will surely abandon Taiwan when the chips are down, quietly ceased after the initial days of the war, when it became apparent that the U.S. was not, in fact, abandoning Ukraine. Beyond purely psychological factors, Ukraine also offers a blueprint for successful resistance via asymmetric warfare very similar to Taiwan’s proposed Overall Defense Concept, perhaps giving a jolt to a plan that most analysts agree offers Taiwan its best chance of success against the PLA but has stalled out in the face of bureaucratic resistance.

While China and the PLA will surely watch Ukraine closely and try to take away the correct lessons, there is one uncomfortable parallel which China may be unable to avoid by the very nature of its authoritarian system. The runup to the Ukraine invasion featured multiple strategic miscalculations by Putin, driven at least in part by him surrounding himself with the yes-men who inevitably cling to authoritarian leaders, eager to please and afraid to speak truth to power. This was obvious in the visibly uncomfortable reaction of Russia’s SVR (foreign intelligence) chief as he was publicly pressured to agree with Putin in the days leading up to the war, as well as in the sackings and arrests of multiple military and intelligence officials after the war turned poorly. Authoritarian leaders have systemic problems in gaining reliable intelligence, oftentimes magnified by their overconfidence in their own singular understanding of a situation. As China continues its slide away from a system of intra-Party consensus toward a one-man cult of personality in which dissenting views are increasingly unwelcome, Xi is bound to encounter the same problem. It is unclear whether Xi will learn this lesson from Putin, or make his own similar miscalculations in the future towards China’s own neighbors.

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Chinese political intimidation via digital yuan
« Reply #228 on: April 18, 2022, 06:06:45 AM »
China’s Digital Yuan, Biggest Threat to the West, Is Overshadowed by Russian War, Kyle Bass Warns
By Frank Fang and Jan Jekielek April 17, 2022 Updated: April 17, 2022biggersmaller Print

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Russia’s war in Ukraine is obscuring one very alarming threat posed by the Chinese regime: its system of paperless money, warned hedge fund manager Kyle Bass.

“It is, I think, the single largest threat to the West in the last 50 years. And it’s being overshadowed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Bass said during a recent interview on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.

Related Coverage
China’s Digital Yuan, Biggest Threat to the West, Is Overshadowed by Russian War, Kyle Bass WarnsKyle Bass: China’s Digital Currency Is a Blackmail Weapon; Beijing Facing Grave Financial and Demographic Crisis
The Chinese digital currency, variously known as the digital yuan, digital renminbi, e-CYN, and e-yuan—is currently being developed by the Chinese regime through its central bank. Since the e-yuan is backed by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), it is a central bank digital currency (CBDC) or simply the digital version of China’s fiat currency.

So far, pilot tests of the e-yuan are being carried out in more than 20 different Chinese cities and the money was made available to visiting foreigners through a mobile app for the first time during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.

“This isn’t a simple digital payment app. This is an app that tracks where you are, what your name is, what your social security number is, [and] what all of your identifiers are. It has the geo-locating ability,” he explained.

Bass explained once the Chinese digital money is fully-developed and is made available to everyone outside of China, the Chinese regime could seek out certain e-yuan users, such as those in financial trouble, and corrupt them.

“Image if the Chinese government had access to every Tom, Dick, and Harry in America, and in Europe, and in Canada,” he said. “Imagine if they could cross-run an algorithm that says, let’s look for U.S. government employees that have Tinder that are short on cash—and maybe they’re married—and we can corrupt them immediately.”

“It gives them the ramp to corrupt anyone and everyone around the world that’s corruptible, which is a real national security problem,” he added. “So it’s a way they can export digital authoritarianism.”

China’s global rollout of its e-yuan has a very specific agenda, Bass said, which is to reduce its dependence on the U.S. dollar.

“About 87 percent of global transactions that China settles are settled in dollars,” he said. “They’re desperately short energy, they’re desperately short food, they’re desperately short basic materials, they have to go buy these things every day around the world, and no one trusts their currency, and they still have a closed capital account.”

“And so what do they have to do? They have to use their [U.S.] dollars to do so,” he said.

More than 80 countries in the world, including the United States, are exploring the issuance of CBDC, according to tracking by the Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council. So far Nigeria is among nine countries that have launched digital forms of their currencies.

In March, the White House issued an outline of President Joe Biden’s executive order on digital assets. The president was “placing urgency” on research and development of a U.S. CBDC, and issuing one was “deemed in the national interest.”

Several U.S. lawmakers have been keen to see the threat posed by the e-yuan properly addressed. In May last year, Reps. French Hill (R-Ark.) and Jim Himes (D-Conn.) introduced the 21st Century Dollar Act (H.R.3506), which would require the U.S. Treasury Department to include in a report for Congress any risks to the U.S. dollar posed by the digital yuan.

In March, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and eight of her Republican colleagues introduced the Say No To the Silk Road Act (S.3784). If enacted, the legislation would require the U.S. Commerce Department and U.S. Trade Representative’s office to file reports on the e-yuan.

Additionally, the U.S. State Department would be required to put a warning on its website, warning U.S. citizens traveling to China “about the dangers of the digital yuan,” according to the text of the bill.

“There are some senators that you’ll see in the coming weeks are going to launch legislation to outlaw its use. And I believe that, that those that legislation must happen,” Bass said.

“The West needs to convene, and we need to ban it immediately,” he added. “You can’t have a little bit of cancer, you either have cancer, you don’t have cancer.”

Frank Fang
Frank Fang
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Frank Fang is a Taiwan-based journalist. He covers news in China and Taiwan. He holds a master's degree in materials science from Tsinghua University in Taiwan.

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GPF
« Reply #229 on: May 02, 2022, 09:43:30 AM »
Avoiding risk. There are some indications that Chinese firms will halt operations in Russia and Ukraine to reduce political pressure from both Beijing and Washington amid the war in Ukraine. Relatedly, Chinese regulators are reportedly looking at ways to protect overseas assets in case the country faces sanctions like those imposed on Russia in the future.


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China misinfo vs. REE competitors
« Reply #231 on: June 30, 2022, 03:11:34 AM »
A Beijing-Backed Information Campaign Targets the Western Rare Earth Industry
5 MIN READJun 30, 2022 | 09:00 GMT




A newly uncovered campaign by Chinese threat actors trying to boost opposition to Western rare earth processing plants showcases that China's information campaign is now expanding to target strategic industries. China's threat actors created fake accounts on social media to criticize rare earth mining companies and planned manufacturing facilities in Texas, U.S. cybersecurity firm Mandiant reported June 28. Mandiant, which has named the Chinese information campaign DRAGONBRIDGE, said it identified accounts used as part of the scheme on multiple social media channels, including Facebook and Twitter, as well as at least one online forum.

The campaign first targeted Australian rare earth mining and processing firm Lynas Rare Earths with accounts posing as local residents concerned about Lynas' proposed light rare earth separation plant in Hondo, Texas. In February 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded Lynas a $30.4 million contract under the Defense Production Act to help build the plant. DRAGONBRIDGE's fake accounts claimed that building the plants would cause irreversible environmental damage and criticized the Biden administration's March 2022 decision to invoke the Defense Production Act to boost the U.S. supply of critical minerals. DRAGONBRIDGE's accounts also quoted and reposted genuine statements from U.S. political figures criticizing or opposing the planned facility to amplify the threat actor's messaging.

Subsequent to the campaign against Lynas, DRAGONBRIDGE-linked social media accounts began targeting Canadian rare earth mining company Appia Rare Earths & Uranium Corp. and USA Rare Earth, the latter of which bills itself as the first fully integrated mine-to-magnet rare earth company based completely outside China.

While this specific disinformation campaign has had a negligible impact, it signals a tactic that China could use more in the future. Mandiant pointed out that the most recent campaign by DRAGONBRIDGE differs from previous information campaigns China has carried out in the United States in two key ways. First, the campaign used more nuanced tactics than previous Chinese information campaigns. China sought to manipulate online social media discourse to increase concern over the environmental and health impacts of Western rare earth mining and processing plants. The accounts also tried to leverage statements and political positions undertaken by figures like U.S. President Joe Biden's use of the Defense Production Act. While China has largely failed to significantly boost opposition to the plants thus far, the decision to exploit political divisions in the United States to try to manipulate online discourse is something that China could expand on in future campaigns.
Second, the campaign targeted an industry of significant strategic interest to China. Previous information campaigns focused on supporting China's geopolitical narrative or targeting Chinese nationals (or ethnic Chinese population groups) abroad. China has an effective global monopoly over the rare earth industry, producing around an estimated 70% to 80% of the world supply. Rare earth are of extreme importance to national security due to the importance of magnets and other rare earth products in defense applications, including precision-guidance systems, night-vision goggles, stealth technology and batteries.

China threatened to block rare earth exports to the United States during the U.S.-China trade war and the United States and other Western countries have sought to break China's dominance in the sector by establishing new mining and processing facilities, like Lynas' proposed facility in Texas.

This highlights how China's information campaigns in Western countries are becoming more sophisticated, even if they are still largely rudimentary and unsuccessful compared to Russian information operations. In the campaign against the rare earth industry, China is borrowing tactics from Russia, which has long used information campaigns and other tactics to support environmental movements in Europe and North America. For example, during the initial debate on the use of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," to produce oil and natural gas in Europe — which would have offset Russian natural gas exports to Europe — during the early 2010s, Russian media outlets and online accounts supported anti-fracking campaigns and amplified anti-fracking discourse online. Most European countries indeed wound up banning fracking. Russia probably found more success than China in part due to Russians' closer cultural connections to Western audiences and the stronger anti-fracking movement in Europe it managed to tap into. Moving forward, China could seek to emulate Russia by targeting other strategic industries, such as biotechnology and artificial intelligence, that have more domestic opposition in the West due to environmental and ethical concerns as a way to boost China's edge in those industries. China will also probably continue to expand its online targeting of Mandarin-, Wu- and Yue-speaking communities in the West and Chinese- and Taiwanese-Americans to stoke anti-U.S. and anti-Taiwan sentiment. The risk of more concerted Chinese efforts to carry out broader and more sophisticated information campaigns is likely much higher in places like Taiwan and India, which hold much greater strategic importance to Beijing and thus make it more likely that Beijing will support riskier information campaigns that could provoke retaliation and potentially limited Western sanctions.

In September 2021, FireEye (now Mandiant) reported how Chinese threat actors aimed to stoke protests and dissent in the United States, frequently using Chinese languages. Given the growth of anti-Asian hate crimes in the United States, China may find more success in exploiting such social discord going forward.

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Brits and FBI warn
« Reply #232 on: July 07, 2022, 02:51:59 AM »

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Re: Brits and FBI warn
« Reply #233 on: July 07, 2022, 06:37:20 AM »

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Foreign Affairs: What to expect from a bolder Xi
« Reply #234 on: July 28, 2022, 10:14:05 PM »
FA is the globalist/Trilateral Commission wing of the Deep State.  Caveat Lector:
========================================================

What to Expect From a Bolder Xi Jinping
Get Ready for a More Ambitious Chinese Foreign Policy
By Yun Sun
July 28, 2022

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/what-expect-bolder-xi-jinping

As China prepares for this fall’s 20th Party Congress, the odds grow stronger by the day that Chinese President Xi Jinping will emerge from the meeting having secured a third term in office. This will mark a break with Chinese precedent since Deng Xiaoping wrote a two-term limit into the country’s constitution in 1982—a limit that was removed in 2018. Xi, who took office in 2013 and is now 69, could foreseeably extend his tenure well into the 2030s.

The consolidation of Xi’s rule comes as his administration faces significant headwinds both at home and abroad. China’s zero-COVID policy has provoked an economic slowdown and popular discontent. Its rivalry with the United States is intensifying, and Xi’s alignment with Russian President Vladimir Putin has created more problems than Beijing bargained for. Under these circumstances, it might be reasonable to think the Chinese leader will recalibrate once his political future is assured. But those who expect Xi to moderate his policies after the 20th Party Congress are likely to be disappointed.

Xi’s personality and political beliefs leave little room for a reconsideration, let alone a reversal, of his vision for the country. What he has described as the “China Dream”—or the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”—sees the Chinese Communist Party leading China’s reemergence as a great power. Xi has shown signs of restraint since Beijing hosted the Winter Olympics in February, prioritizing stability over bold action that would risk undermining his agenda at the Party Congress, but his frustration with China’s strategic position and domestic troubles has been mounting. When the political pressure is lifted after the Party Congress, Xi seems poised to revamp his assertive foreign policy, intervening more directly in disputes on China’s periphery and pushing more forcefully against the United States’ presence in the Pacific. Xi will be back with a vengeance—and he will have uncontested authority and the full power of the Chinese state behind him.

BEIJING’S BAD YEAR

So far, 2022 has not gone well for China. Beijing had hoped that the competition with the United States would slow down under President Joe Biden, but instead it has accelerated as Washington reinforces its network of alliances and partnerships to more effectively counter China. In an attempt to reduce its isolation, Beijing strengthened its strategic alignment with Moscow. Xi and Putin declared “no limit” to the two countries’ cooperation during Putin’s visit to China for the Winter Olympics—and Putin tested this proposition with his invasion of Ukraine, evidently aware that he was exploiting Chinese naiveté while counting on Chinese support. The Russian war triggered international outrage and sanctions, complicating China’s foreign relations and casting doubt on the wisdom of Xi’s decision to align closely with Russia. Skeptical views of China’s Russia policy have circulated on Chinese social media platforms. In widely read posts, Hu Wei, a senior scholar affiliated with the Counselors’ Office of the State Council, a government advisory body, questioned China “binding itself with Russia,” and Gao Yusheng, a former Chinese ambassador to Ukraine, predicted that “Putin is bound to fail” in his war effort.

Beijing’s zero-COVID policy and the prolonged lockdowns in Shanghai and other cities this spring have been another source of domestic discontent. Some Chinese observers speculated that the zero-COVID policy was deployed to undermine the power base of the “Shanghai gang”—a group of party officials who gained influence under former President Jiang Zemin—after Shanghai city leadership took a more liberal approach to pandemic management and economic development than Xi preferred. The toll of COVID restrictions has been tremendous in both human misery and economic cost. Shanghai’s GDP contracted by 5.7 percent in the first half of 2022. China’s overall GDP growth in the second quarter of 2022 was 0.4 percent, its lowest rate in decades.

Controversy over Russia and COVID policy may not be enough to challenge Xi’s reign, but the timing is particularly inconvenient for him. By embarking on an unprecedented third term, Xi will be ushering in a new governance and political model for China. Even for a leader as powerful as Xi, breaking away from established tradition requires significant political capital. He needs to rally broad support among party elites. In China’s meritocratic system, any change must be justified. Xi has to prove his superior wisdom and decision-making abilities—and he needs concrete successes to highlight in support of his claims.

FOREIGN POLICY IN MODERATION

Xi has avoided major foreign policy initiatives that could escalate tensions with neighbors or adversaries this year. Most important, he does not want China to become embroiled in a conflict that would distract him from or undercut his position in the domestic political battles that are now his top priority. This does not mean that China will not react if its interests are under threat—although Chinese reactions to perceived provocations, such as the United States fortifying its support of Taiwan, have been relatively mild so far this year. U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s reported visit to Taiwan, if it happens, could trigger a Chinese military response, but it is highly unlikely that China will use the opportunity to attack Taiwan. China is prioritizing stability, at least until the Party Congress is over.

This restraint has been apparent in China’s handling of contentious issues on its periphery. For instance, since 2020, China and India have held 16 rounds of talks regarding their border dispute. Although the talks have yielded little substantive progress so far, China has eagerly pursued improved diplomatic ties with India in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And as the new South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol reorients Seoul’s foreign policy to emphasize security cooperation with the United States—a significant departure from former President Moon Jae-in’s balancing between the United States and China—Beijing has so far refrained from speaking out forcefully against the change or taking retaliatory measures.

Xi’s frustration with China’s strategic position and domestic troubles has been mounting.

Despite its putative alliance with Moscow, China has declined to take a clear stand on Russia’s war in Ukraine, too. Its economic and military support of Russia has been surprisingly thin, given the expectation that pressure from the United States to condemn Moscow’s behavior would trigger more Chinese defiance. In diplomatic statements, China has defended Russia’s actions and accused NATO of aggression, but Beijing’s fear of U.S. sanctions and the further disruption of U.S.-Chinese relations has moderated its policies in this delicate year of political transition. As a result, Russia has complained loudly to Chinese officials that China has not held up its end of the two countries’ partnership.

Even on Taiwan, Beijing’s most sensitive issue, the Chinese government’s policies have been largely reactive to what it perceives as a U.S. and Taiwanese “salami-slicing” strategy—an effort to inch forward bilateral ties. Rather than escalating, Beijing, for the most part, has kept the intensity of its actions below the threshold set in previous years. So far in 2022, the number of Chinese warplane intrusions into the Taiwanese Air Defense Identification Zone on a single day has not exceeded the record of 56 set on October 5, 2021. Beijing has continued its diplomatic, economic, and legal coercion of Taiwan, but it has not advanced further in luring away Taipei’s remaining diplomatic allies since Nicaragua severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan in December 2021. Nor did Beijing react strongly when Taiwanese Vice President William Lai visited Tokyo to attend former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s funeral in July—a notable example of restraint given the seniority of Lai’s position and his past advocacy of Taiwanese independence.

THE LOOSENING OF CONSTRAINTS

Election season in democratic countries is often marked by lofty campaign rhetoric and political posturing, with candidates making promises they may or may not keep once in office. In China, however, political power struggles are fought and won within the Chinese Communist Party. For Xi, as the incumbent hoping to extend his rule, stability is useful while this competition plays out. But the same logic does not hold after he secures a third term. Some observers have assumed that, after the Party Congress, Xi will moderate his foreign policy because he no longer needs to prove his strength to the party elite. This is a grave misunderstanding. Domestic politics may no longer require Xi to look tough, but his desire to maintain that image and his ambitions for China will not have changed.

The world, therefore, should not expect China to be any less assertive or confrontational after the 20th Party Congress than it has been for most of Xi’s tenure. Beijing’s actions will follow Xi’s convictions, and Xi believes in China’s growing power and in securing the country’s rightful place in the international system. His mission will remain “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” If anything, Xi, having grown increasingly frustrated this year with China’s foreign and domestic challenges, will be prepared to project Chinese power even more forcefully and vehemently after his political drama concludes. Free of his current constraints, Xi will ratchet up China’s activities abroad to put the embarrassment of 2022 firmly behind him.

Once his third term is confirmed, Xi’s status as China’s undisputed leader will enable him to take such action with little to no opposition within the Chinese government. Dissenting views, though faint, have persisted inside the system, but Xi’s success in claiming apparently indefinite rule and his appointment of loyalists to key positions will eliminate them. The echo chamber in which China crafts its foreign policy will be sealed even tighter, amplifying the voices of security services and propaganda departments. With no expiration date for Xi’s reign, his critics will have few channels, official or unofficial, through which they can express their opinions or hope for a change in leadership. Bureaucrats will not only follow Xi’s policies but also augment the tough approach they believe is Xi’s preference.

Even if some officials in China wish to tone down Beijing’s assertive foreign strategy, regional developments may not give Xi the option. Intensifying competition with the United States has set in motion a vicious cycle. Washington is consolidating its alliances and partnerships to counter an assertive China, fortifying bilateral security arrangements with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, as well as the security agreement between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom known as AUKUS; the Quad, with Australia, Japan, and India; and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, announced in Tokyo in May. In China, meanwhile, an anti–United States propaganda machine has been fully mobilized, creating a hypersensitive environment in which any move by Washington whips the “Wolf Warrior” diplomats—Beijing’s new generation of aggressive and coercive representatives abroad—into a frenzy of fanatic overreaction. This approach has a strong domestic incentive: although China’s authoritarian government has enough control over public opinion to lower the temperature if it chooses, so far Beijing has more often found it useful to fan the flames of nationalism as it tries to coerce foreign governments and advance its policy goals.

XI UNLEASHED

Once the Party Congress is behind him, Xi will seek to reassert Chinese power in areas of strategic priority. Disputes in the western Pacific will be at the top of his list. Tensions are already building around the Korean Peninsula, with North Korea’s next provocation only a matter of time and Washington and Seoul intent on enhancing their deterrence against Pyongyang. In Beijing’s view, these developments undermine China’s military security and its regional influence. In addition to tying South Korea more closely to the United States, a focus on deterrence reduces the incentive for diplomatic engagement with North Korea—an endeavor that boosts Beijing’s leverage. As Washington and Seoul strengthen their military capabilities on the Korean Peninsula, Beijing will engage in tit-for-tat deployment of its own forces within Chinese territory and step up its support for and coordination with Pyongyang. Many Chinese experts on Korea have condemned the Yoon administration’s efforts to align with the United States to counterbalance China as a grave strategic misjudgment. Some even anticipate maritime military skirmishes between China and South Korea in the coming months. A similar dynamic is at play between China and Japan as Tokyo strengthens its capacity to counter Chinese military and paramilitary tactics, such as intrusions by warplanes, naval vessels, and fishing vessels into the airspace and waters surrounding the disputed Diaoyu Islands (known in Japan as the Senkaku Islands).

Even more concerning are Beijing’s plans for Taiwan. Chinese leaders are increasingly enraged over U.S. actions that they see as hollowing out Washington’s “one China” policy and Taiwanese actions—both domestic legislation and international outreach—that they interpret as moves toward independence. China has taken a series of legal steps over the past few years, too, inching forward Beijing’s claims in the Taiwan Strait. Since 2020, the Chinese government has formally denied the existence of the median line, long tacitly acknowledged as a maritime border between mainland China and Taiwan. This past June, Beijing went further by claiming that the strait cannot be considered international waters. Next, China may take concrete steps to put this claim into practice—administering the strait as an exclusive economic zone, for instance—in a bid to eventually oust the U.S. military from the waterway, making it more difficult for the United States to intervene in a potential conflict over Taiwan. And as Taiwan’s local election in late 2022 and presidential election in 2024 approach, China will intensify its military coercion and intimidation in the hope of tipping the scales in favor of the Taiwanese political party that is accommodating to Beijing. The brief hiatus in China’s diplomatic pressure campaign will be over, too, as Beijing moves forward with its standing plan to push additional countries, such as the Vatican, to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

Once the Party Congress is behind him, Xi will seek to reassert Chinese power.

The region as a whole will likely become more tense—and less safe—after the 20th Party Congress. China has dragged its feet in negotiations with Southeast Asian countries over a code of conduct for the South China Sea, which would establish rules for maritime activities and a dispute-resolution process to enforce them. And in the meantime, Beijing has been equipping at least three artificial islands with military planes, antiship and antiaircraft missile systems, and laser and jamming technology. The Chinese military’s pushback against U.S. freedom of navigation operations will likely grow bolder during Xi’s third term. This year China has already made several aerial and naval intercepts of U.S. warplanes and vessels that raised alarms among U.S. military officials. Beijing may see the risk of these incidents escalating into full-blown conflict as acceptably low, which means it will continue to employ these tactics in an effort to drive the U.S. military away from China’s periphery.

It is wishful thinking to expect China’s economic slowdown to curb Xi’s ambition or soften his tactics. Xi’s past behavior shows that he does not consider economic performance to be his primary source of legitimacy—just look at his stubborn adherence to the zero-COVID policy despite its tremendous economic costs. Instead, his actions are predicated on the belief that China has accumulated enough wealth to make displays of strength worth the economic price.

China has weathered more than two years of self-imposed, COVID-induced isolation. In 2022, China’s foreign policy has been relatively mild compared with what it could have been. After the 20th Party Congress, however, China will gradually reopen to the world. The return to normal exchanges, trade, and travel will no doubt be eagerly welcomed. But the darker side of the same coin is the resumption—and potential escalation—of China’s assertive foreign policy. When the Chinese Communist Party meets, Xi will be coronated as the “People’s Leader”—a title held only by Mao Zedong and his successor, Hua Guofeng. A strengthened Xi is not going to be more moderate. He will have less to prove to his domestic audience. But he will have all the power and the opportunity he needs to pursue his “China Dream.”

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FA: China on the Offensive
« Reply #235 on: August 01, 2022, 12:15:25 PM »
China on the Offensive
How the Ukraine War Has Changed Beijing’s Strategy
By Bonny Lin and Jude Blanchette
August 1, 2022
Chinese President Xi Jinping delivering a virtual speech in Boao, China, April 2022
Chinese President Xi Jinping delivering a virtual speech in Boao, China, April 2022
Page url
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/china-offensive


In the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Beijing was on the back foot. For weeks after Russian troops crossed Ukraine’s border, China’s messaging was stilted and confused as Chinese diplomats, propagandists, and foreign ministry spokespeople themselves tried to figure out Chinese President Xi Jinping’s line on the conflict. Xi’s “no limits” partnership with Russian President Vladimir Putin was incurring growing reputational costs.

Almost six months after the war’s outbreak and with no end in sight, Beijing has largely regained its footing. Its early concerns that the war would significantly increase overall European defense spending have yet to materialize. Although China would prefer the war to end with a clear Russian victory, a second-best option would be to see the United States and Europe exhaust their supplies of military equipment in support of Ukraine. Meanwhile, rising energy costs and inflation are threatening the resolve of European governments to hold the line on sanctions, signaling to Beijing a potential erosion in transatlantic unity. And even though in advanced democracies public opinion about China has clearly deteriorated, throughout the “global South,” Beijing continues to enjoy broad receptivity for its development assistance and diplomatic messaging.

At the same time, Beijing has concluded that regardless of the war’s outcome, its own external environment has become more dangerous. Chinese analysts see a growing schism between Western democracies and various nondemocratic countries, including China and Russia. China is concerned that the United States may leverage this growing fault line to build economic, technological, or security coalitions to contain it. It believes that Washington and Taipei are intentionally stirring up tension in the region by directly linking the assault on Ukraine to Taiwan’s safety and security. And it is concerned that growing international support for Taiwan will disrupt its plans for “reunification.”

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These perceptions of Western interference have put Beijing once again on the offensive. Moving forward, China’s foreign policy will increasingly be defined by a more bellicose assertion of its interests and the exploration of new pathways to global power that circumvent chokepoints controlled by the West.

WHO TELLS YOUR STORY
Beijing’s reorientation since the invasion is evident in several areas. At the highest level was China’s unveiling earlier this year of a new strategic framework, which it dubbed the “global security initiative.” Although it is still in its early stages, the GSI consolidates several strands of Beijing’s evolving conceptualization about global order. More important, it signals Xi’s attempt to undermine international confidence in the United States as a provider of regional and global stability and to create a platform around which China can justify augmenting its own partnerships. The GSI also counters what Beijing perceives to be false portrayals of China’s aggressiveness and revisionism.

Xi first outlined the GSI during a virtual speech in April. Strictly speaking, there was little new content in Xi’s speech. But in announcing the GSI, Xi was seeking to wrest narrative control on global security away from the United States and its allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific and discourage countries from joining U.S.-led military blocs or groupings. With this initiative, Xi has put something else on the table to compete with a U.S.-led discussion about what an international order should look like after the war in Ukraine. Core to Beijing’s broader story is that China is a force of stability and predictability in the face of an increasingly volatile and unpredictable United States.

Just as important, Beijing continues to position itself as an innovator and leader in twenty-first-century global governance. Since the GSI’s initial rollout, it has become a standard item to include in meeting readouts from China’s bilateral and multilateral engagements across Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America, evidence that Beijing is pushing for the diplomatic normalization of its new initiative, and thus, inclusion in the vernacular of global governance. Although the GSI may not gain much traction in Tokyo, Canberra, or Brussels, it will find resonance in Jakarta, Islamabad, and Montevideo, where frustration with elements of the U.S.-led order is manifest.

Xi’s April speech also confirmed that the strategic alignment between China and Russia continues, despite Putin’s disastrous war in Ukraine. In particular, Xi included a reference to “indivisible security,” a phrase that dates to the early 1970s and negotiations between the Soviet Union and the West known as the Helsinki Process, but under Putin, has become a short-hand for Moscow’s argument that NATO expansion directly imperils Russia’s own sense of security. As Chinese officials have made crystal clear, Beijing sees a direct connection between NATO’s expanding presence in Europe and the United States’ growing coalition of security partners in the Indo-Pacific. As Le Yucheng, then a top foreign ministry official, said in a May speech, “For quite some time, the United States has kept flexing its muscle on China’s doorstep, creating exclusive groups against China and inflaming the Taiwan question to test China’s red line.” He went on: “If this is not an Asia-Pacific version of NATO’s eastward expansion, then what is?” This linkage of the Russian security environment to China’s was also a central component of the joint statement put out by Xi and Putin on February 4.

MORE AND CLOSER FRIENDS
As part of its post-invasion reorientation, China is also rapidly strengthening partnerships with countries that fall outside of the Western camp—that is, most of the “global South.” China has long sought to deepen its friendships abroad, but it is now recognizing that some countries, such as European democracies, will never stand with it when forced to choose. Referencing Ukraine, Le lamented in March that “some major countries make empty promises to small countries, turn small countries into their pawn and even use them to fight proxy wars.” Beijing does not want to face the same fate if it were to find itself in a conflict against Taiwan or any of its neighbors. As the Chinese scholar Yuan Zheng has explained, Beijing believes “that a potential proxy war is what some hawkish individuals and groups back in the U.S. are expecting to take place in China’s neighborhood.” Even if Chinese leaders are still confident about their country’s political system and its growing economic and military power, they recognize that it is still dependent on external goods and resources to fuel its development and growing military capabilities. Accordingly, Beijing is moving fast to both deepen and broaden partnerships to increase its immunity to crippling sanctions and to ensure that it is not alone in hard times. This includes strengthening bilateral relations with Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. In August, Venezuela is expected to host a sniper competition as part of Russia-led military exercise in the Western Hemisphere that will likely involve China, Russia, Iran, and ten other countries in a show of force against the United States.

China is also keen to cement exclusive blocs of countries that will support it—or at least not support the United States. Chief among these efforts is China’s attempt to strengthen and expand the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—as an alternative developing world bloc to compete with the Quad, the G-7, and the G-20. In May, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a meeting of BRICS foreign ministers that included an additional nine guests, including from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The next month, as the host of a BRICS summit, Xi advocated expanding the group and proposed new cooperative efforts on the digital economy, trade, and investment, and the supply chain. Xi also invited an unprecedented 13 world leaders to participate in a high-level dialogue on global development with BRICS countries, including Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. Not long after, Argentina and Iran officially applied to join the BRICS group, and Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey expressed interest in doing so, as well. In July, Moscow went so far as to suggest that the group’s members “create a new world reserve currency to better serve their economic interests.”

Perceptions of Western interference have again put Beijing on the offensive.
In addition to BRICS expansion, Beijing is seeking to transform the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes Russia, into a powerful bloc that can leverage deep political, economic, and military ties. China has long pushed for more SCO economic cooperation and proposed the establishment of a free trade agreement and creation of a SCO bank. Although these ideas fell flat last year, this year, in May, the SCO discussed the need for increased interactions among member states, particularly on international security and economic cooperation. As SCO formal membership expands to include Iran later this year, and potentially Belarus in the future, the organization is primed to become more assertive on the world stage. Indeed, this June, Tehran proposed that the SCO adopt a single currency and expressed hopes that the group can become a “concert of non-Western great powers.”

Within both blocs and beyond, it will be increasingly important to observe how much China, Russia, and Iran are able to deepen relations with one another and drive broader alignment among countries that are dissatisfied with U.S. leadership. Similarly, the extent to which China can leverage its close relationship with Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to build support among Muslim countries, including with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Gulf Cooperation Council, is another variable affecting support for China among developing countries.

BACKING UP WORDS WITH FORCE
A final component of China’s foreign policy rethink concerns military force. Beijing believes that the West is incapable of understanding or sympathizing with what it views as legitimate Russian security concerns. There is no reason for China to assume that the United States and its allies will treat China’s concerns any differently. Because diplomacy is not effective, China may need to use force to demonstrate its resolve.

This is particularly true when it comes to Taiwan, and Beijing is now more anxious than ever about U.S. intentions toward the island and what it perceives to be increasing provocations. This has led to discussion among some Chinese foreign policy analysts about whether another Taiwan Strait crisis is imminent and, if so, how China should prepare. Yang Jiechi, a diplomat who serves on China’s Politburo, has stated that China will take “firm actions”—including using the military—to safeguard its interests. At the same time, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has engaged in more exercises near Taiwan in an effort to deter potential third-party intervention. These dynamics likely explain why Beijing is issuing unusually sharp warnings over the visit to Taiwan that Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is planning, saying that such a trip would “have a severe negative impact on the political foundations of China-U.S. relations.”

It would be a mistake to brush aside China’s warnings—and its threats of military action—simply because prior warnings have failed to materialize. Although the prospect of an invasion of Taiwan remains remote, Beijing has numerous paths to escalate short of outright conflict, including sending jets to fly over Taiwanese territory. And if Beijing did take more drastic action out of frustration with recent U.S. behavior, this could easily provoke a full-blown crisis. 

IT’S UP TO XI
Will China’s recent efforts to shift the balance of momentum and power in its direction work? It remains to be seen if the GSI will fundamentally alter the international order, or even become a key pillar of China’s approach to global governance. China has tried and failed before to drive the discussion on global security, as was the case with its New Security Concept, a security framework that sought greater economic and diplomatic interactions, which was first articulated in 1996. Back then, of course, China had far less economic and diplomatic leverage. And regardless of its ultimate success, the GSI is an important window into how Beijing will seek to steer the conversation on regional and global security after the upcoming 20th Party Congress, which is expected to be held in the fall.

Beijing’s efforts to revitalize and expand existing organizations such as the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization also face obstacles. India, for instance, is a member of both blocs and may constrain any openly anti-American efforts. But even marginal improvements in the capabilities and cohesion of these groupings would help Beijing blunt any coercive or punitive moves that the United States and its allies may make against China in the years ahead.

But perhaps the biggest factor shaping China’s strategic environment moving forward is Beijing itself. On paper, one can begin to glimpse the initial outlines of China’s readjusted game plan. Deeper ties with the “global South.” A repurposing of existing Beijing-led institutions like the SCO. New concepts of security that align with its own vision for international order. Implemented well, this strategy would no doubt complicate U.S. foreign policy. But these efforts take considerable time, and they could unravel if Beijing’s increasingly aggressive and coercive behavior against its neighbors generates international pushback or reticence to work with China. Xi’s penchant for “own goals” and his dramatic overreach have proved to be the single biggest inhibitor for China’s grand strategy. His hunger for power could well doom Chinese foreign policy.


Crafty_Dog

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Re: China vs. the World; Chinese political intimidation & penetration
« Reply #237 on: August 27, 2022, 07:54:46 AM »
"Life is tough.  It is tougher when you are stupid."
John Wayne
In our stupidity we have Manchurian Joe Biden as our Commander in Chief,  Kommiela Harris one heart-beat from stepping in, and Nancy Pelosi two heart beats from stepping in:
=================
Gordon Chang: Chinese Communist Party Is Preparing for War
By Andrew Thornebrooke August 25, 2022 Updated: August 26, 2022

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is preparing for a war, according to China analyst and author Gordon Chang.
Several recent developments in China’s policies—particularly an amendment to China’s National Defense Law—could signal that the regime is prepping for a full mobilization of its military, according to Chang.

“China’s newly amended National Defense Law takes certain powers over military matters from the civilian State Council and gives them to the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, which controls the People’s Liberation Army,” Chang said in an email to The Epoch Times.
“That move centralizes military decision-making. Moreover, the amendment, which relates to war mobilization, signals that the regime is preparing the Chinese people for conflict.”

In addition to centralizing the authority for military mobilization, Chang noted that the CCP was making efforts to effectively sanction-proof its political elite by forbidding certain officials from owning foreign real estate or shares in offshore companies.

“If Chinese officials and their family members do not own foreign assets, foreign countries cannot strip them of their holdings,” Chang said.
“Shedding these assets, therefore, makes those individuals immune to one of today’s most commonly imposed sanctions.”

Through the centralization of authority over military mobilization and the shoring up of economic defenses against potential international sanctions, Chang believes that the CCP is preparing for the possibility of armed hostilities. The question remains, however, as to just where such a war could break out.

Waging People’s War

Following a month of unprecedented military exercises and economic retaliations, Taiwan is in the limelight.

There are numerous other flashpoints along China’s periphery—any one of which could quickly escalate to outright conflicts—such as the mountainous Ladakh border region that China shares with India, disputes throughout the South China Sea with the Philippines and Vietnam, and disputes in the East China Sea with Japan.

Indeed, Chang believes that China’s neighbors could be a potential target should the CCP believe the opportunity is on its side.

“In the past few weeks, China’s regime has put Taiwan in the spotlight, but the Chinese party-state is threatening most of its neighbors to its south and east,” Chang said. “All neighbors there, large and small, are under threat.”

“We do not know where Beijing will strike next. China’s Communist Party does not act on grievances; it acts when and where it smells opportunity.”

Beyond hostilities in pursuit of regional hegemony, Chang said there is another threat permeating the world—the CCP’s ambition to leverage an international people’s war.

People’s War is a doctrine established by communist leader Mao Zedong and later evolved by Deng Xiaoping to promote long-term revolutionary communist struggle. According to Chang, the current CCP leadership is blending the doctrine of People’s War with a global Chinese identity to weaponize the Chinese diaspora community and promote the CCP’s interests.

“China’s regime makes the ‘blood’ argument, that all Chinese are of the same blood and that all are therefore bound to support the Communist Party,” Chang said.

“The Party has recently been making the case that it must unite the world—tianxia or ‘All Under Heaven’—and that means uniting all Chinese, no matter where they live and no matter their citizenship.”

Biden Unprepared for CCP Aggression

Though the CCP has been working on weaponizing the Chinese diaspora against the West for decades, Chang does not believe the United States is prepared for conflict with China. Indeed, he said that the Biden administration failed to comprehend the CCP as an adversary.

“President Biden gives the impression that he is oblivious to China’s mobilization of Chinese society,” Chang said. “He will not even call China an ‘adversary,’ and he certainly does not use the correct term, which is ‘enemy.'”

To that end, Chang said that he feared the administration is content to watch and wait as the CCP prepares for armed hostilities that could overwhelm the United States and its ability to defend itself.

“Biden must tell the American people what China is doing, tell the American people that they too must prepare for war, and tell the armed forces to get ready for battle,” Chang said.

“Too often in the past, American presidents let enemies attack us first. The Chinese will not, with their first attack, give us the opportunity to rally ourselves.”

Whereas previous animosities in the Sino-American relationship were effectively overcome through dialogue, Chang said that CCP leader Xi Jinping now maintains a military that is superior in every way to that of China 20 years ago, and that the regime is now, after years of preparation, prepared to go to war.

“Xi is making all-of-society preparations to engage in sustained conflict,” Chang said. “China is now more ready for battle than it has been in centuries.”

“That’s what makes this moment truly different.”

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Wuhan testing viruses with 60% fatality rate
« Reply #238 on: August 28, 2022, 01:27:53 PM »
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/aug/9/chinas-wuhan-institute-studied-deadly-bioterrorism/

presumably making them so those with Han genes have  immunity

perfect bioterror weapon

But Fink just sees $$$$ .... :-(



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Chinese penetration of British Air Force
« Reply #240 on: October 19, 2022, 01:17:49 PM »


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GPF: The Germans are at it again, this time with China
« Reply #242 on: October 28, 2022, 08:33:31 AM »

October 28, 2022
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German Foreign Policy for Sale
Berlin is trying to secure the best deals for itself in an increasingly bifurcated world.
By: Ryan Bridges

The world is dividing into two rival camps, one led by the U.S. and another by China, but it seems as if no one told the Germans. This week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz signed off on Chinese shipping giant COSCO’s purchase of a 24.9 percent stake in a Hamburg port terminal, overruling his coalition partners and six ministries in the process. Outraged, the ministries controlled by Scholz’s coalition partners apparently leaked details of a formal letter outlining their objections, saying the investment “disproportionately expands China's strategic influence on German and European transport infrastructure as well as Germany's dependence on China.”

But that’s not all. On Nov. 3-4, Scholz will lead a German business delegation to China. The president of the Federation of German Industries and the CEOs of Siemens and Volkswagen will accompany him – Mercedes, Deutsche Bank and SAP declined to join. The visit raises several questions. Why was Berlin in a hurry to approve the Hamburg port deal before the trip? Why go now, when Western unity against Russia and its backers (including China) is so critical, and when Scholz will see Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Bali later in November anyway? Why go alone, and not as part of a common front, at least with French President Emmanuel Macron? (Recall that when he invited Xi to visit Paris in 2019, Macron invited then-Chancellor Angela Merkel and the commission president to participate, which they did.) And why bring business executives, when Germany is already highly reliant on China, and German officials have repeatedly raised the urgency of economic diversification?

Exports are the lifeblood of the German economy, and its large manufacturing and chemicals firms have serious influence over German policymaking. They also aren’t shy about using it. For example, BASF said this week that it will “permanently” downsize its European operations due to weak growth in the European chemical market, spikes in regional natural gas and power prices, and – in an unsubtle dig – EU-induced regulatory uncertainty. German industry has grumbled all year that the loss of cheap Russian gas poses an existential threat to its operations and, to hear industry bosses tell it, the German nation. Despite this, the Hamburg port deal and the business trip to Beijing are ultimately political decisions – ones Scholz did not have to make. There is no rush: COSCO told investors it was reconsidering the deal after Berlin reduced its share in the port terminal from 35 percent, which would have given it a blocking minority, to quiet critics inside the Cabinet. And publicly, at least, there is no urgent business between Berlin and Beijing that couldn’t wait until Scholz and Xi are both in Bali 12 days later. The urgency and parochialism are self-imposed.

Germany's Reliance on Exports | 1970-2021
(click to enlarge)

It is also inconceivable that Scholz is unaware of the frictions these developments will cause with Germany’s allies in the U.S., Europe and Asia. This leaves two possibilities: First, that Berlin is charting a nonaligned course for itself in the new cold war between the U.S. and China. Or second, that it is attempting to secure the best relationship it can with China now, while there’s still time, in order to lock in economic opportunities and strengthen its future position with respect to its partners.

Berlin does have some room to maneuver. An interesting side effect of Russia’s quagmire in Ukraine is that over time it diminishes a key element of U.S. leverage over Germany. German and European security is guaranteed by NATO, which is to say by the U.S. military. But the alliance has been in search of a justification for itself for much of the 21st century. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine shocked NATO out of its obsolescence, but Russia looks less threatening every day. Russian forces are desperately trying to hold what meager Ukrainian territory they have seized over eight months of fighting until poorly trained reinforcements can arrive. Far from credibly threatening NATO with World War III, Moscow’s strategy appears to be to survive until Western societies lose interest in Ukraine or become sufficiently alarmed at Russian nuclear threats to back down. In five or 10 years, it’s doubtful that Russia will pose a greater threat to Germany than it does today or than it was believed to pose at the start of the year. Domestic pressure in the U.S. to reduce its commitments in Europe will only grow, and a sudden change is conceivable under a Republican administration. But this threat will not have the same immediate resonance in Berlin as it did when then-President Donald Trump made it in 2020. It’s less and less clear what the tens of thousands of U.S. troops stationed in Germany are protecting the Germans against.

At the same time, as Washington tries to outmaneuver Beijing, it is becoming more protectionist. The Germans are furious about “Buy American” provisions in President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which favor domestically produced electric vehicles. It may make sense to the White House to defend its industrial base to compete with China, but German carmakers don’t understand why they should be excluded too. This is all the more alarming for Germany because, far from abandoning its export-led growth model, Berlin wants to double down, as evidenced by its considerations to reopen free trade talks with Washington.

Germany’s problem is that its economic model is so dependent on trade that its foreign policy is effectively for sale, but it can only seriously entertain one bid: America’s. NATO may not be necessary for Germany’s immediate security, but it still provides the order upon which Germany has built its entire grand strategy. The core of Germany’s economic strength is its dominance of the European market, which comes at the cost of giving 26 other governments a veto on aspects of its policymaking. Russia may not scare Germany now or in the next few years, but the countries between them will not feel the same. Forced to choose between, say, a controversial EU-China investment agreement or American security guarantees against Moscow, Eastern Europeans will choose the Americans. Scholz’s government has not given the east any reason to believe Berlin is able or willing to replace U.S. guarantees. Berlin is trying to weaken its partners’ veto with a proposed fast-track trade approval procedure, which would sideline national parliaments and break up trade deals so the parts that matter most to Germany could be voted on separately (and by national leaders only). However, this would not eliminate U.S. leverage. Perhaps more important, in the meantime U.S. energy leverage over Europe is set to soar, as the Continent sucks up U.S. liquefied natural gas in place of Russian gas.

The German economy will struggle to cope with a world divided into rival blocs. It might still be in denial about U.S.-Chinese decoupling. More likely, it is trying to make the most of the time and leverage it has left to extract the best deal it can for itself. With any luck, China will make concessions to it in a desperate bid to break the U.S.-EU front. Scholz’s flirtations with Xi may push the U.S. to take its allies’ concerns into consideration when making future moves to hurt China or help itself. But ultimately, Germany has nowhere else to go and lacks the will to try to create a third way

Crafty_Dog

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Chinese penetrating port of Hamburg
« Reply #243 on: November 03, 2022, 05:17:02 AM »
We will be working double stick for Snaggletooth Variations today plus, as always, taking requests,

Remember guys-- this online class is about how to teach DBMA so please bring your questions.


Crafty_Dog

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China-Germany
« Reply #245 on: November 10, 2022, 06:58:42 AM »
Stratfor

What to Take From German Chancellor Scholz's Visit to China
9 MIN READNov 9, 2022 | 20:12 GMT





Visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and members of his delegation attend a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Nov. 4, 2022.

Visiting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and members of his delegation (right side of table) attend a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Nov. 4, 2022.

(KAY NIETFELD/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's recent trip to China indicates that Berlin will continue to maintain trade ties with Beijing while also working to gradually reduce critical dependencies, despite mounting external and domestic pressure for a more aggressive decoupling. Scholz visited China on Nov. 3-4 accompanied by a large business delegation, the first Western leader to do so since Chinese President Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term in October. The two leaders condemned the threat of nuclear weapons in Ukraine and discussed the mutual need to ensure the stability of food and energy supply chains. Finally, as Scholz was flying back to Berlin on Nov. 4, the German Chancellery posted a tweet that noted the ''reliability and trust'' between Germany and China as the basis for a ''political partnership'' between the two countries. As he was flying back to Berlin on Nov. 4, Scholz tweeted that ''reliability and trust [formed] the basis of diplomatic relations and political partnerships'' and that it was ''a good thing that [he and Xi] met in person and held talks.''

Top executives from some of Germany's largest firms — including BASF, Volkswagen, BMW, Deutsche Bank and BioNTech — joined Scholz on his trip.

In Beijing, Scholz also raised concerns about the Xi administration's use of trade for political coercion and push for near-total control over the Chinese economy, as well as problems of market access and IP theft for European companies operating in China.
In a Nov. 3 op-ed penned to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Scholz defended his decision to travel to China amid growing criticism from Berlin, Washington, Brussels, Paris and several other European capitals. He rejected the idea that Germany should ''decouple'' from China, arguing that the country remained ''an important economic and trading partner for Germany and Europe'' and that he was traveling to Beijing ''precisely because 'business as usual [was] no longer an option in [today's] circumstances.'' In response to the backlash over this trip, Scholz also noted that he had coordinated ''closely'' with EU and U.S. partners ahead of the visit, adding that a ''German policy on China can only be successful when it is embedded in European policy on China.''

A strategic rethinking of relations with China is underway in both Germany and the European Union, with Berlin being urged to reduce strategic economic dependencies on China. For decades, Europe had viewed China primarily as a commercial opportunity as opposed to a potential competitor or systemic rival. But in recent years, EU countries have started to reconsider their strategic approach to Beijing amid growing security concerns related to expanding ties with an increasingly assertive and autocratic regime. Germany, meanwhile, is also reviewing its China strategy. Berlin's new position, which is set to be made public sometime next year, is expected to focus on weakening Germany's economic reliance on China and diversifying supply chains, all the while preserving business ties with Beijing. China remains Germany's largest trading partner and a key investment destination for large German companies, which have even recently hiked investment into the country against the trend of most other European firms that have largely frozen or reduced their commitments in the past few years. However, the value of Germany's foreign investment in China is also highly concentrated in a relatively small number of large multinational companies, particularly in the automotive industry. While the impact wouldn't be as critical as Germany's decision to reduce its reliance on Russian natural gas following Russia's invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, this means that Germany's export-driven economy would be hit hard if a major geopolitical crisis (such as a Chinese invasion of Taiwan) forced Berlin to quickly reduce trade ties with Beijing. Moreover, Germany still has critical supply vulnerabilities rooted in its overreliance on China, which mostly consist of high imports of Chinese rare earth minerals, essential components for solar and wind technologies, as well as certain chemical goods and electrical equipment.

China was Germany's largest trading partner for the sixth consecutive year in 2021, accounting for 9.5% of its trade in goods. According to a study conducted by the German Economic Institute, German businesses' direct investment in China totaled a record 10 billion euros in the first half of 2022.

A 2021 study from Germany's Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimates that a decoupling in trade with China would cost Germany about 1.4% of GDP (or roughly 48.4 billion euros) in real income, and 1% of GDP for the European Union as a whole. In a study published earlier this year, the Cologne Institute for Economic Research (IW) estimated that exports to China accounted for 2.7% of Germany's total economic added value and 2.4% of employment.

Germany's automotive industry has significantly expanded its foreign investment in China in recent years. China represented 29% of the sector's total foreign investment in 2019, which typically accounts for more than 70% of German investment and over a third of European investment in the country.

EU foreign ministers discussed revising the bloc's strategy toward China at an Oct. 20-21 summit in Luxembourg. Ahead of the meeting, EU ministers received a letter on Oct. 17 from the European External Action Service (the bloc's agency for foreign relations) advising them to take a tougher stance on China and to see the country as an all-out-competitor with only limited areas of potential cooperation.
Germany will continue to seek commercial ties with China while simultaneously working to further diversify its exports and reduce supply chain dependencies. Scholz's words before and after his two-day trip to Beijing show how Berlin has indeed acknowledged the status quo has changed under President Xi's iron-fisted rule and that Germany needs to reduce its economic dependencies. At the same time, the trip confirmed that Germany's approach to Beijing is still driven by a perception of China as primarily a trading partner and key market for some of the country's most prosperous and strategic industries. The combination of these realities will compel Germany to continue to seek commercial ties with China as long as they remain viable and profitable by exporting cars, machinery and other goods to a vast market that still harbors the potential for further growth. At the same time, Berlin will also seek to reduce dependencies in industrial supply chains.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has recently reiterated her demand for a more assertive ''new China strategy,'' arguing that ''China is our partner on global issues'' but also a ''competitor and increasingly a systemic rival,'' adding that ''we will base our China policy on this strategic understanding and also align our cooperation with other regions in the world.''

In an interview with the newspaper German Welt am Sonntag published on Nov. 4, German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said Germany ''must recognize that China is not only a place to do business, but also a systemic rival.''

Scholz is also facing backlash after signing off on a deal allowing Chinese state-owned shipping giant Cosco to buy a 24.9% stake in one of Hamburg's port three terminals in October. EU and U.S. leaders have both criticized the deal, along with several members of Scholz's own cabinet. Still, the decision to allow a smaller stake than the originally planned 35% is a compromise between Scholz and his coalition partners — further illustrating the Chancellor's balancing act in his approach to China, which seeks to maintain business ties while limiting strategic dependencies.

There are signs Berlin is becoming increasingly wary of granting China access to strategic assets. On Nov. 9, for example, the German government blocked the sale of Elmos Semiconductor's wafer facility to a Swedish subsidiary of China's Sai MicroElectronics due to security concerns. The government is also reportedly planning to block a pros
pective Chinese takeover of the German semiconductor firm ERS Electronic in Bavaria for similar reasons.

After analyzing direct and indirect value-added linkages along Germany's supply chain, the Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich recently concluded that China played an important but ''by no means dominant role'' for Germany as a supplier or destination market. The study, which was published in June, found that China accounted for 7% of all foreign value added to the production of final goods in Germany, whereas the European Union represented 44% and the United States 10%. But analysis conducted at the product level also showed that the German economy remained dependent on China for several critical industrial goods and raw materials.

While expanding trade ties with China will not represent a systemic threat to the German economy, it will leave German companies with a large presence in the Chinese market exposed to growing operational, reputational and financial risks. Berlin will likely accelerate and coordinate action with fellow EU countries and other key allies — including Japan, Australia, and the United States — to build alternative supply chains in critical sectors by expanding economic cooperation with other countries, including in China's neighborhood. Ultimately, however, the onus will be on German companies. While they'll be allowed to keep trading with China, German firms will face increasing pressure to reduce critical dependencies, increase export diversification to other markets, and put in place contingency plans to ensure continuity of operations should a geopolitical crisis with China (i.e. an invasion of Taiwan) require a sudden decoupling. Failing to do so may come at the cost of ready and cheap access to capital, either in the form of government guarantees (which Berlin offers to German companies in emerging markets to protect their investments from political risk), or lower creditworthiness and company valuations on the financial markets due to perceived high levels of geopolitical risk.

In May, Germany's economy ministry refused to extend Volkswagen's investment guarantees for China, citing human rights violations in Xinjiang. The ministry is now working on plans to cap the number of such guarantees for China, according to the Financial Times.
According to a recent survey conducted by the Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, nearly half the German manufacturers that receive significant inputs from China plan to reduce their Chinese imports, mostly citing ''to decrease dependencies and increase diversification, increased freight costs and disruptions in transportation, as well as political uncertainty'' as the main reasons.

Scholz allegedly rejected a proposal by French President Emmanuel Macron to hold a joint meeting with Xi, highlighting a lack of concrete alignment on China between the European Union's two largest economies. However, both Scholz and Macron have critiqued the United States' increasingly confrontational stance on China, advocating instead for a more nuanced approach that still sees Beijing as a trade partner, with a focus on diversifying (and not decoupling) from China.

Crafty_Dog

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FA: How to Stop Chinese Coercion
« Reply #246 on: December 20, 2022, 01:36:19 PM »
How to Stop Chinese Coercion
The Case for Collective Resilience
By Victor Cha
January/February 2023
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/how-stop-china-coercion-collective-resilience-victor-cha

It took just seven words for the National Basketball Association to get canceled by Beijing. As pro-democracy protesters swarmed the streets of Hong Kong in October 2019, Daryl Morey, then the general manager of the Houston Rockets, one of the NBA’s 30 teams, posted a simple message to his Twitter account: “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong.” Chinese broadcasters and streamers quickly announced that they would no longer show his team’s games. The league, which has more viewers in China than in the United States, immediately tried to distance itself from Morey’s tweet, writing that the general manager didn’t speak for the NBA and issuing a statement that implicitly rebuked him. That response fostered a backlash among fans outside China and did nothing to please Beijing. A bipartisan collection of U.S. senators blasted the league for not standing by Morey’s freedom of expression while all 11 of the NBA’s Chinese sponsors and partners suspended their cooperation. With a couple of exceptions, China’s broadcasters stopped airing NBA games until March 2022. The league’s commissioner, Adam Silver, estimated that the rupture cost his organization hundreds of millions of dollars.

At first glance, the row between China and the NBA may seem like small potatoes: a tiny example of how the U.S.-Chinese relationship is now more defined by contestation than by close economic partnership. But Beijing’s behavior toward the NBA is emblematic of a much bigger and extremely worrying pattern, and it is one that the Biden administration’s China strategy does not wholly address. Over the last dozen years, Beijing has slapped discriminatory sanctions on trading partners that interact with Taiwan or support democracy in Hong Kong. It has imposed embargoes on and fueled boycotts against countries and companies that speak out against genocide in Xinjiang or repression in Tibet. Indeed, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has gone after almost any entity that has crossed China in any way. And this strategy has worked. Because the Chinese economy is so integral to global markets, China’s coercive behavior has caused tens of billions of dollars in damage. The mere threat of Chinese cutoffs is now prompting states and businesses to stay quiet about Beijing’s abuses.

This silence is both deafening and dangerous. The CCP is carrying out a genocide of China’s Uyghur minority in Xinjiang, engaging in a wide variety of other human rights abuses, and menacing nearby countries—but states are too afraid to respond. Left unchecked, this paralysis could hollow out the postwar liberal order. Should they fear major penalties, few governments, for instance, will come to Taiwan’s defense if it is attacked by China. They will not help New Delhi if China attempts to take more Indian land in the Himalayas. They will hesitate to join the White House’s supply chain initiatives.


Concerned countries could appeal to the World Trade Organization, the usual arbiter of international economic disputes, to try to free them from the specter of Chinese sanctions. But the WTO is unlikely to be of any help. It can investigate an 80.5 percent Chinese tariff on Australian barley as discriminatory, but if China simply stops importing bananas from the Philippines or stops sending tour groups to Korea by citing the “will of the Chinese people,” there is little the organization can do in response.

The Biden administration is aware that Chinese economic predation is a major problem. It has responded by advocating resilient supply chains among like-minded partners in everything from personal protective equipment to memory chips, allowing these states to stop relying so much on Chinese-made goods. The administration has also imposed export controls on the transfer of advanced computing chips and chip-making equipment to China, and it may soon extend these controls to quantum information science, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and advanced algorithms.

But these efforts are at best a partial solution. Countries may be able to wean themselves from some Chinese goods in the supply chain, but Biden cannot reasonably expect most of them to decouple from one of the largest economies in the world. Export controls by the United States on the transfer of cutting-edge technologies to China won’t work unless other countries possessing such technology—including Denmark, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, and the United Kingdom—join in. And these states may choose not to participate in Washington’s supply-chain and technological coalitions because they fear Chinese economic retaliation.

To successfully compete with China, the United States needs to do more than insulate states from Chinese coercion. It needs to stop the coercion from happening in the first place. To do so, the United States will need to band together with its partners and draw up a new strategy, one of collective resilience. China assumes that it can boss other countries around because of its size and central role in the global economy. But China still imports enormous numbers of goods: for hundreds of products, the country’s economy is more than 70 percent dependent on imports from states that Beijing has coerced. Together, these goods are worth more than $31.2 billion to the Chinese economy. For nearly $9.1 billion worth of items, China is more than 90 percent dependent on suppliers in states it has targeted. Washington should organize these countries into a club that threatens to cut off China’s access to vital goods whenever Beijing acts against any single member. Through such an entity, states will finally be able to deter China’s predatory behavior.

Dealing with China’s weaponization of trade will be necessary if the Biden administration wants to successfully compete with Beijing. And although a U.S.-led collective-resilience bloc may strike proponents of globalization as mercantilist, they should understand that it is in fact essential to their project. China will continue to abuse its economic position and distort markets until it is forced to stop. Collective deterrence, then, may be the best way to keep the global economy free and open.

WILD ABANDON
China’s predatory actions are carefully designed to hit countries where it hurts most. Consider what Beijing did to Norway in 2010. After a Norwegian committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to a Chinese dissident, Beijing heavily restricted imports of Norwegian salmon. Over the next year, the product went from cornering almost 94 percent of China’s salmon market to just 37 percent, a collapse that deprived the Norwegian economy of $60 million in one year. After South Korea agreed to host a U.S. missile system in 2016, Beijing forced stores in China owned by the enormous Seoul-based Lotte Group to shut down, causing over $750 million in economic damage. China similarly banned and then heavily restricted the sale of group tours to South Korea, costing the country an estimated $15.6 billion.

Beijing also frequently targets individual businesses if they or their employees deviate from China’s official positions. In 2012, Chinese protesters—encouraged, according to a Los Angeles Times report, by Beijing—shut down Toyota’s manufacturing plants in China in response to tensions over the Senkaku Islands, which are administered by Tokyo but which Beijing claims (and refers to as the Diaoyu Islands). In 2018, Beijing took the website of Marriott Hotels offline for a week after the company sent an email to its rewards members in which it listed Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and Tibet as separate countries. The company apologized and issued a public statement against separatist movements in China. The same year, Beijing made more than 40 airlines—including American, Delta, and United—remove references to Taiwan as a separate country on their websites simply by sending them a menacing letter. And in 2021, the Chinese state media egged on a boycott of the Swedish fashion retailer H&M after it expressed concern about forced labor in Xinjiang. H&M sales in China quickly dropped by 23 percent.

To be fair, China is not the only country that engages in economic coercion. It is in some ways endemic to the international system. Writing in these pages in January 2020, the political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman observed that globalization had enabled many countries to leverage financial power in pursuit of political ends, a phenomenon they have called “weaponized interdependence” in their earlier work. This isn’t always a negative. Indeed, in some situations, states have weaponized interdependence to target clearly bad international behavior. The widespread Western sanctioning of Russia for the war in Ukraine, for example, and the United States’ financial sanctions against North Korea and Iran for nuclear proliferation were designed to curtail illegal and dangerous acts.

Biden cannot expect most states to decouple from China.
But what China is doing is different, both in scale and kind. The United States may issue frequent sanctions, but these follow a clear set of processes: Washington does not weaponize economic interdependence through such a wide variety of means. One recent study identified 123 cases of coercion since 2010, carried out through popular boycotts against companies, restrictions on trade, limits on tourism to foreign countries, and other mechanisms. And aside from when the Trump administration levied a bizarre spate of tariffs against American allies, no other government has imposed sanctions or embargoes so casually, penalizing states for mild annoyances rather than broadly unacceptable international actions, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There is, for example, a direct correlation between countries whose leaders have met with the Dalai Lama and a decline in those states’ exports to China.

Beijing is unapologetic about the use of these sanctions and does not acknowledge that they violate global trading norms. It is not worried about domestic discontent arising from its behavior because the illiberal nature of China’s political system insulates the government from pushback. And because its trading partners are all more dependent on China than the other way around, Beijing usually has the advantage. As the Chinese ambassador to New Zealand warned in 2022, “An economic relationship in which China buys nearly a third of the country’s exports shouldn’t be taken for granted.”

HALF MEASURES
Beijing’s long-term objective is to force governments and companies to anticipate, respect, and defer to Chinese interests in all future actions. It seems to be working. Major democracies such as South Korea remained silent when China passed a national security law in Hong Kong suppressing democracy in 2020. In 2021, Brazil did not exclude the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei from its 5G auction for fear of losing billions of dollars in business. In 2019, after the Gap clothing company released a T-shirt design with a map of China that did not include Taiwan and Tibet, it issued a public apology and removed the shirt from sale, even before Beijing said anything. After the salmon restrictions in 2010, Norwegian leaders refused to meet with the Dalai Lama when he visited in 2014. And according to reports and investigations by a variety of organizations, including The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and the human rights nonprofit PEN America, Hollywood companies won’t produce films that cast China in a negative light for fear of losing ticket sales.

Beijing’s apparent success doesn’t mean that countries have sat idly by while China has weaponized economic interdependence. The world’s heavy reliance on Chinese manufacturing—starkly illustrated by shortages of masks and other personal protective equipment in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic—has prompted almost every country to become more attuned to its own economic security. Japan, for instance, set up a new cabinet position for economic security in October 2021 and passed legislation to guard critical supply chains and technologies. During the spring of 2022, in the aftermath of both Beijing’s coercion and the pandemic, South Korea created an early warning system designed to detect threats to nearly 4,000 key industry materials. The South Korean government also established a new economic security position in the presidential office.

States have also gotten better at redirecting trade, meaning that when China imposes tariffs or an import embargo on a target state’s goods, the target state finds alternative markets. This strategy has seen some success. Throughout 2020, China approved tariffs on Australian barley, coal, and wine in response to Canberra’s calls for an independent investigation into COVID-19’s origins, prompting Australia to redirect these goods to the rest of the world. When China restricted exports of rare-earth minerals to Japan over a territorial dispute in 2010, Japan diversified its sources of critical minerals and invested more in domestic seabed exploration. As a result, it has reduced its dependence on China for critical minerals from 90 percent to 58 percent in a decade.

Countries are now following Biden’s advice to “reshore” and “friend shore” supply chains, moving key elements of production from China (or places where China exercises inordinate influence) to manufacturers back home or to trusted partner economies. Through the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad, Australia, India, Japan, and the United States are building resilient supply chains for COVID-19 vaccines, semiconductors, and emerging and critical technologies, including those related to clean energy. The countries participating in the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework are working on establishing an early warning system, mapping out critical supply chains, and diversifying their sources for important goods. In June, the United States announced the Minerals Security Partnership, an alliance with Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Japan, Norway, South Korea, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the European Union to safeguard the supply of copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare-earth minerals. Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States are contemplating the creation of an alliance called Chip 4 that would consolidate the supply chain for semiconductors.

These measures are all useful and necessary. But they do not constitute a comprehensive solution. Reshoring and friend shoring insulate states against China’s disruptions to the production chain while doing nothing to stop its economic coercion: securing the supply of one product does not prevent Beijing from cutting countries off from another product. Indeed, countries’ enthusiasm for participating in such measures is limited by fears that China will retaliate. South Korea, for example, has hesitated to join the Chip 4 alliance in part because it is concerned that Beijing would once again ban many of its consumer goods and block the flow of Chinese tourists. Supply chain resilience, trade diversion, and reshoring can work only if complemented by a strategy crafted to end China’s predatory economic behavior.

FLIPPING THE SCRIPT
Part of China’s hubris in practicing economic coercion against its trade partners comes from confidence that the targets will not dare counter sanctions with concrete action. Beijing is right to be confident: it is hard for any single country to go up against an economic behemoth. China, for instance, accounts for 31.4 percent of global trade in Australia, 22.9 percent in Japan, 23.9 percent in South Korea, and 14.8 percent in the United States—whereas those countries respectively account for 3.6 percent, 6.1 percent, 6.0 percent, and 12.5 percent of China’s trade.

But these states can fight back if they work together or, in other words, practice collective resilience. That strategy would flip the script. Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the United States may individually be at a disadvantage, but combined they account for nearly 30 percent of China’s imports, exceeding what China’s exports account for in most of theirs. Add Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Lithuania, Mongolia, New Zealand, Norway, Palau, the Philippines, Sweden, and the United Kingdom—all countries that Beijing has coerced in the past—and the collective share of China’s imports is 39 percent. These states all produce critical goods on which China is especially dependent. China gets nearly 60 percent of its iron ore, essential to its steel production, from Australia. It gets more than 80 percent of its bulldozers and Kentucky bluegrass seed, important for sowing fields, from the United States. More than 90 percent of China’s supplies of scores of other goods—cardboard, ballpoint pens, cultured pearls—are sourced from Japan. And 80 percent of China’s whiskey comes from the United Kingdom.

To build a bloc that can stop Chinese coercion, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the United States must first come to an agreement among themselves. The first three governments are the United States’ key allies in the Pacific, and all four nations are prominent market democracies and the core stakeholders in the region’s liberal political and economic order. A commitment to join forces would not be without risk, but all have been prime targets of Chinese economic predation and have a powerful incentive to collaborate.

These four states must then take stock of which other countries are willing and able to join in, working through existing partnerships such as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework to promote the strategy. The best candidates for membership would be the 12 other states most profoundly affected by Chinese economic coercion. Many of these countries may be very weak compared with China. But if they joined forces with the four main members, they would enjoy formidable leverage: for 406 items, China imports more than 70 percent of what it uses from one of these 16 states; for 171 of those items, the import figure rises to 90 percent. (Lithuania and Palau do not produce any of these goods, but both are frontline states in need of protection, and so they should be welcomed into the coalition.) The four founding countries could also approach the European Union, which is currently considering milder measures to counter Beijing’s coercion, to see whether it is interested in joining their effort.

The impact of these imports is far from trivial. For example, China relies on Japan for more than 70 percent of its supplies of 114 items, amounting to over $6.2 billion in trade, and for more than 90 percent of its supplies of 47 items, worth over $1.7 billion. China is over 70 percent dependent on U.S. producers for 94 items, totaling over $6.0 billion, and 43 items for which China is over 90 percent dependent on U.S. producers, worth over $1.5 billion. Added up, all 406 of the “high dependence” goods produced by coerced states are worth more than $31.2 billion to China.

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS
But having the capability to fight back is only half the battle. The other half is political will: For collective resilience to be credible, countries must be willing to sign up for it in the face of fierce Chinese resistance. Beijing is likely to use a combination of carrots, such as offering discounted digital infrastructure, and sticks, such as more export restrictions, to deter countries from joining and to try to peel them off if they do. States will need to build enough domestic political support to withstand the external pressure and resist the temptation to free-ride by accepting coalition support without ever actually sanctioning China.

Given that most participants would be democracies, this will prove difficult. But the pact’s bigger countries can take several steps to help smaller or poorer states endure the discomfort. They can create a collective compensation fund for losses and offer alternative export or import markets to divert trade in response to Chinese sanctions. Bigger states can also provide clear reassurances to smaller powers that they would not be left high and dry if Beijing slapped them with sanctions. That means the larger countries, particularly the original four, would need to delineate clear actions they would take to restrict important exports to China if Beijing bullied any pact member, even if those steps were economically costly to them. The four organizing members would also have to agree on what types of bullying would elicit a response. Disputes over trade that could be adjudicated by the WTO, such as whether China can adjudicate Western technology patent protections in its courts, would not meet the threshold. The trigger would be coercive Chinese economic actions taken for political purposes.

During the Cold War, Washington routinely played dirty to protect the liberal order.
Yet despite the challenges, states would likely recognize that joining the pact and staying the course is worth the short-term costs. They would need to recognize and explain to their citizens that ultimately, ending Chinese economic coercion would be in their long-term interests. China could initially fight back against the new group by finding alternative suppliers for one, two, or even several high-dependence goods. But if tariffs, nontariff barriers, or embargoes were applied to a wide range of the 406 high-dependence items made by prospective coalition members, the costs of finding new suppliers might cause Beijing to think twice before taking coercive actions. Eventually, China would have to stop such behavior, which would result in a level playing field for all of the collective’s participants.

The participating states could feel confident that China would indeed stop. Despite its authoritarian system, China has proved quite sensitive to supply chain obstacles, evidenced by the fact that it rarely applies sanctions to imports of high-dependence goods. Beijing was happy to cut off South Korea from Chinese tourists, but it has not sanctioned Samsung; it needs the company’s memory chips. It has not touched Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, another critical supplier of computer chips, even as tensions with Taipei reach new heights. In all its sanctioning of Australia, Beijing never so much as threatened Australian iron ore even though it is one of the country’s most lucrative exports.

If Beijing was unwilling to locate alternative sources for Australian iron ore at dependency levels of 60 percent, it will certainly be sensitive to the many goods for which it is more than 70 percent dependent on outside countries—not to mention the ones where its dependence exceeds 90 percent. Then there are the 40 products made in the United States and Japan on which China is 99 or 100 percent reliant. Beijing does not want to lose access to any of them, especially when it is already struggling from a general economic slowdown.

FAIR AND SQUARE
The idea of collective resilience may trouble proponents of free trade and globalization. But collective resilience is not a trade war strategy; it is a peer competition strategy. It is defensive, resting first on the threat to weaponize trade, not on the actual use of sanctions. If China does not use its economic power to coerce, there is no need to make good the threat.

The strategy is also clearly and narrowly targeted. Its participants are not trying to punish China just for the sake of doing so; the goal is not to undermine the nation’s economy. The goal is to deter acts of economic coercion that do not conform to WTO rules and are aimed at meeting Chinese political goals unrelated to trade. According to an analysis published by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a nonprofit think tank, about a proposed European Union instrument to combat Chinese coercion, collective resilience could even comply with WTO regulations. China’s acts of economic hostility are beyond the remit of the organization’s laws, and nothing in the WTO rulebook prohibits states from engaging in self-defense.

That’s not to say that practicing economic resilience will never require sanctions on China. It may well do so, at least at first. But policymakers can rest easy knowing that any sanctions, if properly structured, would ultimately be in service of protecting economic interdependence. That notion may seem paradoxical, but sometimes conducting international relations requires living with contradictions. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time the United States has played dirty to keep a global system clean. During the Cold War, Washington routinely countenanced illiberal practices to protect the liberal order—for example, supporting anticommunist military regimes in South Korea and Taiwan as bulwarks against more brutal nearby powers. Today, the West may need to compromise on its free trade principles if it wants to prevent Beijing from corrupting globalization. It may need to be aggressive. A successful defense, after all, requires a good offense—including in great-power competition.

Crafty_Dog

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Pompeo: China knowingly infecting people around the globe again
« Reply #247 on: January 03, 2023, 06:44:39 AM »
World Faces ‘Millions More’ Infections as China Reopens Borders Amid COVID Surge: Pompeo
China 'knowingly infecting' people around the globe, says former secretary of state
By Dorothy Li January 2, 2023

Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has accused the Chinese regime of “knowingly infecting people all across the globe” as the country prepares to reopen its border amid a record surge of COVID infections.

China is grappling with an explosive COVID-19 outbreak that has yet to peak. About 248 million people, or 18 percent of the country’s population, were estimated to have been infected by the virus between Dec. 1 to 20, according to a memo from an internal meeting of the country’s top health regulator leaked online.

As the virus swept through the nation of 1.4 billion, the regime announced last week it will reopen its borders on Jan. 8, scrapping one of the last remaining curbs from the strict zero-COVID policy that upended daily life for hundreds of millions and battered China’s economy.

During a Jan. 1 interview with entrepreneur and talk show host John Catsimatidis on The Cats Roundtable, Pompeo warned about the reemergence of chaotic scenes such as those that occurred in Italy at the onset of the pandemic.

“The data is no good. But it sounds like we might have as many as a million—a million, John, a million—Chinese people infected,” he continued.

“Fifty percent of their population traveling, there is no reason that we should allow the Chinese to do this, again, to send Chinese-infected persons around the world, knowingly infecting people all across the globe.”

International Concern
Since the onset of the pandemic, the communist regime has drawn mounting criticism for covering up COVID-related information. Amid the current explosive outbreak, the lack of transparent data has prompted international concern, particularly regarding the possibility of a new, stronger variant emerging out of China.


Italy, the first European nation to be hit hard by COVID-19 after the virus surfaced in China in late 2019, has moved quickly to mandate COVID-19 tests for all travelers coming from China, including those traveling through Italy to other destinations. “The measure is essential to ensure surveillance and detection of possible variants of the virus in order to protect the Italian population,” Italian health minister Orazio Schillaci told parliament on Dec. 28.

The main airport in Milan had already begun to screen arrivals from Beijing and Shanghai on Dec. 26. On the first flight from China to be tested, 35 out of 62 passengers tested positive for COVID-19, an Italian health official said.

The United States last week announced it will require passengers to present a negative COVID-19 result or proof of recovery before boarding a U.S.-bound flight from China. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the step is intended to slow the spread of COVID-19 in America amid the massive outbreak in China, given what it calls the “lack of adequate and transparent epidemiological and viral genomic sequence data being reported” from China. The agency is considering measures like sampling wastewater from international flights to track potential new variants.

In Sunday’s interview, Pompeo lambasted Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping, warning the virus unleashed by the regime’s abrupt reopening could infect “millions more.”

“Xi got away with this once. I regret that he wasn’t held accountable,” the former lawmaker said. “He hasn’t been held accountable. But we should still do that for the 6 million people who died between spring of 20[20] and today, but he’s doing it again.”

“Just as in the spring of 20[20] he sent people around the world who he knew were infected. He’s doing the same darn thing again. He’s going to infect millions more, we shouldn’t let that happen.”

Doubts Over Official Data
Scenes of overwhelmed hospitals, people on intravenous drips by the roadside, and lines of hearses outside crematoria have stoked widespread distrust of the regime’s official COVID-19 information.

Regional data from Chinese provinces and cities recently estimated the infection rate may have exceeded 50 percent in some areas, painting a picture much grimmer than what the nation’s central authorities have disclosed. The infection rate in the southwestern province of Sichuan, which has a population of more than 84 million, is over 63 percent, according to a Dec. 26 statement by the Sichuan Center for Disease Control and Prevention.


Despite the spiraling surge in infections, China only recognized one new COVID-19 death on Jan. 2, according to Reuters, pushing the total fatalities to 12 since the regime abruptly reversed course on Dec. 7.

Chinese health officials recently explained that they define a COVID-death to be an individual who dies from pneumonia or respiratory failure caused by COVID-19. That excludes deaths from other COVID-related causes, as well as the deaths of individuals with underlying diseases.

Michael Ryan, head of health emergencies at the World Health Organization, has said the narrow criteria would “very much underestimate the true death toll,” reported the New York Times on Dec. 23.

The World Health Organization on Dec. 30 once again urged China’s health officials to regularly share specific and real-time information on the COVID-19 situation in the country, as it continues to assess the latest surge in infections.

Lunar New Year Risk
Expectations for holiday travel have grown as China lifts travel and other harsh requirements for the first time in nearly three years.

China’s biggest holiday, Lunar New Year, begins on Jan. 22 this year. During the holiday, the country’s railway network is expected to carry 5.5 million passengers, state broadcaster CCTV has said.

Authorities at Tibet’s spectacular Potala Palace said it would open for visitors on Jan. 3, after shutting down last August due to a COVID-19 outbreak. Some hotels in the southern tourist resort of Sanya are fully booked for Lunar New Year, media have said.

Epoch Times Photo
Travelers walk at the departure hall of the Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong, on Dec. 30, 2022. (Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)
In recent days, state media have sought to reassure the public that the COVID-19 outbreak is under control and nearing its peak.

However, outside researchers predicted an alarming scenario for the first Lunar New Year festival after China’s reopening. By Jan. 23, the second day of the Lunar New Year, the country may see as many as 25,000 people dying from COVID-19 each day, according to the latest estimate by Airfinity, a London-based health analytics firm. Infections are predicted to reach their first peak on Jan. 13, with 3.7 million cases a day.

Currently, the virus is infecting 1.8 million people in China each day, with cumulative cases totaling 20.4 million since Dec. 1, Airfinity said in a statement released Dec. 29 and updated with even bleaker numbers Dec. 30. That indicates that China is likely seeing 11,000 virus-related deaths a day, Airfinity said, more than doubling its estimate from a week ago.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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China bids to rule the commercial waves
« Reply #248 on: January 10, 2023, 02:39:46 PM »
China Bids to Rule the Commercial Waves
Beijing is building a maritime logistics empire that could be an advantage in a future conflict with the West.
By Christopher R. O’Dea
Jan. 9, 2023 6:15 pm ET


A shipping company with deep ties to Chinese state-owned companies purchased container terminals in New York and New Jersey in December, raising serious questions about the ability and willingness of the West to counter China’s strategic capability. China’s growing maritime commercial logistics empire poses a direct threat to the liberal international order. Beijing is building a platform for control of oceanic commerce and an amphibious invasion force that is extending the frontier of Chinese Communist Party influence to U.S. shores.

The consolidation of the global container-shipping industry into three alliances in 2016 opened the door for a new type of global organization operating largely beyond the reach of national regulators. Shipping companies formed the alliances to manage cargo capacity after price cutting led to the bankruptcy of a major shipping line in 2016. Alliance regulations bar shipping lines from fixing prices but allow them significant leeway to buy terminals and inland logistics assets. Operationally, alliance members often concentrate container service at alliance-owned terminals, which can make ports more dependent on a dominant alliance.

China controls one of the shipping alliances. The Ocean Alliance is dominated by Cosco Shipping, a Chinese state-owned company that is the world’s second-largest operator of ports—and is ultimately accountable to the Communist Party. The other members of the Ocean Alliance are Taiwan-based Evergreen Line and CMA CGM, a family-owned company based in Marseille, France, with deep ties to Chinese state-owned companies.

Cosco and other Chinese state-owned port and shipping companies have been steadily expanding their holdings in the West since 2000. By some analysts’ count, Chinese companies own or operate terminals in 96 ports in 53 countries. But it is the relative handful of terminals Chinese state-owned companies control in ports serving major population centers in the West that creates the greatest exposure to Chinese leverage.


Control of ports and terminals gives China economic and political influence over host-country governments where Chinese state-owned enterprises operate critical infrastructure. The contracts are even referred to as “concessions,” aptly implying that Western governments accept the superior containerized logistics capabilities that the Chinese companies have developed since acquiring the American technology in the late 1970s.

The newest salvo in China’s maritime commercial expansion came on Dec. 7, when CMA CGM said it is buying container terminals in New York and New Jersey. Most of the scant mainstream news coverage failed to note CMA CGM’s significant financial and operational links with Chinese state-owned companies. In 2013, CMA CGM sold 49% of its own terminal subsidiary to China Merchants Holdings (International). In 2015 the Export-Import Bank of China extended to CMA CGM $1 billion in financing to buy ships from Chinese shipyards. That funding has helped CMA CGM become one of the largest logistics enterprises in the world, with commanding positions in the supply chains for automotive parts and electronics. Satellite photos of Chinese shipyards show CMA CGM’s newest liquid-natural-gas-powered vessels being built alongside Chinese aircraft carriers.

Through the Maritime Security Program, the U.S. Transportation Department maintains a fleet of privately owned vessels intended to provide shipping for national-security purposes. This fleet includes seven vessels operated by container-shipping company APL, which CMA CGM acquired in 2016. In 2021 the Transportation Department approved replacement of an eighth APL vessel with one from CMA CGM.

U.S. allies including Greece, Canada, Germany and Israel have turned to Cosco and other Chinese state-owned shipping companies to invest in their terminals or build entire ports, sometimes over strenuous objections from Washington. Singapore and France are dependent on Chinese container volume or have national-champion companies that are business partners with the Chinese companies. If the bellicose rhetoric about imminent naval war with China leads to combat in the Western Pacific, prompting China to allow only Ocean Alliance vessels access to its ports, will those countries risk being cut off from Asian supply lines to side with the U.S.? A cold-eyed appraisal of the logistical situation suggests that’s a long shot.

Adm. Raymond Spruance, who helped devise the island-hopping strategy the U.S. used in the Pacific Theater during World War II—and then carried out the plan as commander of Fifth Fleet—wrote that a sound logistics plan determines the success or failure of military operations. The Chinese have such a plan for their economic campaign against America and the West. At the moment, the U.S. has nothing.

Mr. O’Dea is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute and author of a forthcoming book, “Ships of State: The Maritime Logistics Foundations of the New Chinese Empire.”